


It's Not That Simple

by Anonymous



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Coven, American Horror Story: Hotel, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Assisted Suicide, Attempted Murder, Attempted Seduction, Awkwardness, Bisexual!Mallory, But It's Still Mentioned A Lot, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Confusion, Drinking, Drug Use, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, F/M, Family, Fear, Fix-It, Flowers, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Haunted Houses, Hospitals, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Like It Doesn't Really Happen, One-Sided Attraction, Paranoia, Slow Burn, Smoking, So Like A Fucking Lot Of Violence, Sorry Not Sorry, Suicide, The Flowers Are A Cover Up, Time Travel, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, Underage Smoking?, Visions, Warning: Rubber Man, hit and run, honestly, oof, poor babies, theological discussion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25846246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mallory was sent backwards through time by her coven with only one instruction: change the future. Prevent the demise of her fellow witches. And the easiest way to do that is to kill Michael Langdon before his powers gets a chance to fully develop.But as it turns out, killing the Antichrist isn't as easy as hitting him a few times with a car, and now Mallory is stuck years in the past, with no idea how to save her coven. The only plan that comes to mind is to get close enough to figure out Michael's weaknesses, and yet even that isn't as simple as she might have thought...**ON HIATUS**
Relationships: Michael Langdon/Mallory
Comments: 88
Kudos: 108
Collections: Anonymous





	1. A Second Chance

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the creative rights to any characters, locations, objects, etc. from American Horror Story, nor do I intend to make profit from this fanfiction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I binge-watched American Horror Story on Netflix, and since 1984 isn't on there, the last I saw of the series was Apocalypse's shitty season finale. And I know I'm like, two years late to the party, but I saw an ending that needed fixing, so I'm gonna write fanfiction about it, dammit! Anyway, hope y'all enjoy!

The neighborhood was as she had imagined it - big houses, expensive lawns greener than dollar bills, fancy gates around every home. Cars more expensive than the rest of Mallory's possessions combined. One good thing about that, at least - the stolen car Mallory was currently driving at top speed had _great_ air conditioning. The weight of seven billion lives was on her shoulders, but at least she could keep out the California heat. It would have been funny if it weren't so fucked up.

That seemed true for a lot of things lately.

She took a sharp turn, nearly hitting a street light as she sped through the neighborhood. She was actually a very careful driver, most of the time - always making sure she drove exactly the speed limit, obeyed every traffic signal, had never gotten a speeding ticket in her life. Well, screw that. She was on a tight schedule, and besides, if anyone tried to pull her over, she could deflate their tires with a thought.

"Faser, faster," she muttered, urging the vehicle to surpass its current speed, even though she knew going any faster would be suicidal. Still, even though she was moving fast enough to topple any mailbox she happened to hit, it didn't feel fast enough. The thought kept worrying at her mind - _what if she had somehow gotten the wrong time? What if there was no way to stop the coming slaughter, even if she managed to kill him?_

_What if changing the future was just impossible?_

She gripped the steering wheel as she made another sharp turn onto Westchester Place, tall houses and palm trees blurring past. She saw the figure running into the road, and knew who it was even though she couldn't see his face. She pressed harder on the gas pedal as the car sped closer and closer.

For a moment, time stood still, as if Heaven and Hell had paused the show to grab some movie-theater buttered popcorn. On one side of the wheel, a girl barely older than seventeen pressed her foot against the gas pedal as she hurtled toward the only life she would ever enjoy taking. And on the other, the person who would grow up to destroy everything and who would probably laugh maniacally while doing it.

_Come one, come all! What are the bets? Do I hear one-hundred? Do I hear one-fifty? You, the young lady putting seven-billion on the line!_

The unpause button was clicked, and the scene continued.

Mallory's grip on the steering wheel would have been enough to crush the average human's windpipe. As she raced forwards, her eyes locked onto the person moving into the middle of the street, blissfully unaware of what was coming for him.

_Didn't anyone teach you to look both ways, you little shit?_

Mallory couldn't help a small gasp at the moment of impact, shoving down the brake pedal as the car skidded to a stop. Her hand moved to her seat belt buckle before her mind could catch up to her body, and she had to dig her fingernails into her palms to stop the panic running through her veins. _Deep breaths_ , she reminded herself as the panic from the impact wore away. _You're not hurting anyone who matters_.

In the movies, car accidents were always clean, showing the pedestrian with maybe a couple broken ribs and a small puddle of blood, but generally pretty tame stuff. You know, for the kids. That wasn't like real life. In real life, there was a splatter of blood on your windshield and spiderweb cracks from the hit, and you were left gasping for air as gravity tugged your heart down into your feet.

They said the first kill was always the hardest. She hoped she wouldn't have to learn what a second time felt like.

She tilted the rearview mirror, watching as Michael Langdon slowly, shakily, but most definitely pushed himself to his feet. Mallory slammed down the reverse pedal.

The second hit was easier. Maybe it was because the action was behind her this time, and she was only watching through a mirror rather than having it right in front of her eyes. Or maybe it was because she already knew how messy it would be. She still had to catch her breath a moment as she again slammed down on the brake pedal, this time facing forwards.

She glanced next to her, out the window the car's owner had foolishly left open. She needed some fresh air. Instead, she saw an older woman watching her - she must have been Michael's grandmother, Mallory could see the similarities even from a distance. The two made eye contact, and Mallory held her breath, waiting for the woman to start screaming and dialing nine-one-one. Instead, she gave Mallory a slight nod, as if to say, _go ahead. I don't care._

It could have been a moment where Mallory felt sorry Michael, that his family members obviously hadn't given two shits about him. But she just felt relieved that she wouldn't have to explain this in court.

Mallory faced forward again, stomped on the gas pedal, and hit him a third time.

She sucked in a gasp of air, leaning back against the seat. Dimly, she realized that she was trembling, and she grabbed onto the steering wheel, reminding herself that she was here, that this was real, but that it wouldn't stay that way if she couldn't do this. She tilted back her rearview mirror, fully expecting to see Michael Langdon sprawled out on the ground, either dead or dying, probably covered in blood, maybe with some spattered on the road around him for dramatic measure.

What she didn't expect was to see him still, shakily, pushing himself onto his feet. "Come on," she half-said half-groaned. "Die already, why don't you?"

For the second time, she shoved her foot down on the reverse pedal and shot backwards. The impact rattled the car, but this time, she didn't even flinch. Again, she pressed down on the brake pedal, and this time felt the seatbelt momentarily dig into her skin. Panting, she watched the figure now laying on the road, covered in blood. The older woman was still watching, and for a brief moment, Mallory thought she might have seen her somewhere before.

For a moment, Mallory thought she had been successful as Michael lay, motionless, blood leaking from various cuts. She was no expert in human biology, but one would think that being hit four times with a car that was being driven by someone who had nothing to lose and every reason to hate the victim would be enough to kill even the most stubborn of souls. Destroy even the most durable of bodies.

And then, uncertainly, weakly, Michael Langdon reached out a bleeding, trembling hand, and pushed himself off the blood-stained gravel.

"What the fuck," she panted, for a moment only able to watch as he stumbled his way to his feet. Then, she was unbuckling her seatbelt and shoving the door open, jumping out of the car and slamming the door behind her, blood boiling in her veins as she stamped to the front of the car.

_Cordelia's voice, echoing into the room where Mallory lay, useless as the blood leaked from her wounds and time wouldn't flow through her grasp like it had before. "Satan has one son, but my sisters are a legion, motherfucker." And then, a gasp, and the haunting sound of blade breaking flesh. And as Mallory felt the power flowing into herself, she wasn't Langdon that had received that killing blow._

Mallory growled, raising her left hand the way Madison would when she was being particularly dramatic. Power burned through her, like electricity heating up wires and circuits, except this kind of power was almost alive.

She had never killed anyone before. Everyone else - Madison, Queenie, even Myrtle - had taken another's life at some point. She had never envied them for it. Now, though, she wished she at least had the past experience, the knowledge of what it felt like to be responsible for another's death, so that she could handle this one with grace. Though she knew that when one of the others had killed in the past, it was for far more selfish reasons than her own.

And then, she noticed the eyes watching her.

The man must have been out for an afternoon jog, judging by the damp hair and sweaty gym shorts. He could have been in his late twenties or early thirties. And he was staring open-mouthed at Mallory, a cell phone clutched in one hand. Probably already ringing nine-one-one.

She knew what it looked like. If your car hits someone once, it's an accident that you feel guilty for, and when you get out of the car, you're doing it to make sure that the pedestrian is alright, to see if they need an ambulance. But when you hit someone four times, it's attempted homicide, and when you leave the car to go to the person, you're doing it to make sure you've finished the job.

Which was exactly what Mallory was doing.

_Fuck._

She glanced at Langdon, now stumbling weakly away from her, favoring his right leg. _It would be so easy._ All she needed was a single thought, and she could snap his neck, or stop his heart, or even just blow him up.

_You could kill him right now. You could kill the jogger, or at least make him forget. No one has to know._

Her hand was shaking, and she dug her fingernails into the palm of her right hand, trying to ground herself in the moment. She was having a panic reaction, from a combination of stress and exhaustion. She had seen it happen before, to her mother who had stayed up night after night trying to find a way to 'cure' her daughter. She knew it happened in books and movies, when the heroine or hero was under a particularly large amount of stress, and cracked like glass under the pressure.

A lot of people see that kind of thing happen, but no one thinks it will happen to them until it's happening to them.

She glanced at the pedestrian, who was watching her while holding the cell phone to his ear, probably waiting for the operator to pick up. She glanced at the car, covered it bumps and scratches from four impacts. And she looked to Langdon, covered in blood and scratches, leaning heavily on his left leg. She should be taking pleasure from his pain, as he would have from her own, but all she could feel was a sort of detachment. Not guilt, but not any positive emotions either.

She gulped, making eye contact with him. And then, she turned towards the city, and the sparkling blue of the ocean in the far distance, and she ran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this first chapter is so short, but the next ones will be longer, I promise.
> 
> As of August 11th, 2020, I am planning to update this fic on the eleventh and the twenty-fifth of every moth until completion, though that may be subject to change.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net, respectively, on August 11th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than those two websites, please contact me immediately.


	2. Know Thy Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mallory gets some advice from a returning character, and makes a decision that could put her very life in jeopardy.

Mallory didn’t know how long she ran, or how far. She only knew that she needed to get away from her failure, from the accusing voices of Cordelia and all the rest of the coven ringing in her ears, from the lives of an entire world depending on her. She ran for what could have been a millennium or a minute, the world fading into sounds and colors that didn’t include her as she passed it by.

Eventually, she had to stop, panting as she braced herself against a stone column. Sweat had soaked through her dress, and it stuck to her skin like gum on a sidewalk. She looked up at the sky, not a cloud to be seen. She had forgotten how beautiful the sky was, how endless and deep that shade of blue seemed to be. She could have cried right then as the thought hit her.

She was here. She was right here, and this was real, and the world was still spinning, seven billion people simply going about their lives, being born and falling in love and making babies and retiring and dying from natural causes. Not a thought of nuclear annihilation on any of their minds, save for the science fiction writers. The world was  _ alive _ and spinning and beautiful, but more than that, it had a second chance. It could be saved.

The same couldn’t be said for the future that Mallory had left behind. A future where the survival of the human race was a countdown clock, only so much time left until the last human took their last breath and died, from starvation or mutated animals or a bullet in the mouth when they realized that there was no reason to keep going. And if Mallory couldn’t kill Michael Langdon, then that future would almost definitely still come to pass.

She  _ would not _ allow that to happen.

She whirled around and punched the column beside her, letting out a sound somewhere between a shout and a scream. She panted, for a moment only able to stare at the flecks of red on the otherwise pristine white stone. She held up her hand, staring at the blood that oozed from her knuckles. It felt good to feel that pain. It made her feel alive. She balled her hand into a fist and hit the wall again, harder this time. Imagining blood running down her arm in little crimson rivers.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” a voice spoke up behind her, and Mallory stiffened, turning to find the source.

An older woman with graying hair was staring at her, one hand on the wrought-iron gate in front of the building. Her mouth was turned downward in what could have been annoyance or concern. “Are you alright?” the woman asked, shuffling her feet.

Mallory couldn’t help a small chuckle as she thought of how that word had changed, gone from meaning just feeling genuinely fine, to meaning that you’re not dead yet. “What’s your definition of alright?” she asked dryly, wiping her knuckles off on her dress. The woman opened her mouth to say something, but Mallory stopped her with a hand gesture - from the hand that wasn’t bleeding. “I’m fine,” she reassured the woman, who definitely seemed to be learning more towards being concerned. “The last twenty-four hours have just been…” She trailed off, unable to find the right word. What word did you even use to describe the worst day of your life?

“Hectic?” the woman offered with a small smile.

Mallory nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably the right word.”

The woman’s smile widened, practically glowing in all its warmth. “I get the feeling,” she said, gesturing to the building towering over them. “I’ve worked at this hotel for almost twenty years. I have those days.” Mallory nodded absentmindedly. Even this woman, whoever she was, whatever her story was, had probably never had a day quite like the one Mallory was having. Then, Mallory realized what the woman had said.

“Oh, I’m sorry about the mess -” Mallory stammered, glancing at the column now flecked with blood. That this kind woman would probably have to clean.

The woman dismissed Mallory’s apology with a wave of her hand, giving a wry chuckle. “Oh, it’s no problem. The Hotel Cortez already has a nasty reputation, anyway. A couple bloodstains won’t hurt the business.”

Mallory froze, staring at the woman.  _ The Hotel Cortez already has a nasty reputation, anyway. The Hotel Cortez. Hotel Cortez. _ Where, according to Cordelia, Queenie had been murdered. Queenie, a member of the witches’ council, a woman who could make another feel her pain so long as she could see them, a woman who had risen to attempting the seven wonders oh-so-long ago. Mallory had never really gotten the chance to know Queenie, but Cordelia had always kept a picture of her one her desk. As a reminder, and a warning.

The Hotel Cortez had been banned from the students at Miss Robicheaux’s Academy, along with any other locations with a notable supernatural presence. Cordelia had been certain that Queenie’s murder had been done by something that wasn’t human, though she hadn’t revealed many details to the student body at the Academy. It had taken the spawn of Satan to get Queenie out of that death trap.

_ But that hasn’t happened yet _ , Mallory reminded herself. She had asked a stranger the date, when she had first found herself in the fresh air of a world that had never known nuclear holocaust. They had looked at her funny, and told her that it was October of 2015. Queenie wouldn’t be killed in the Hotel Cortez until November of this year. And whoever this woman was, she probably hadn’t had anything to do with the witch’s murder.

“I can clean it,” Mallory said lamely, glancing towards the column, “It’s really no problem, Miss….” She trailed off, realizing that the woman had never said her name.

“You can call me Iris,” the woman said warmly, pushing the gate open ever-so-slightly. The movement made an ominous creaking sound, audible even over the chatter of downtown Los Angeles. “And it’s no problem, really,” Iris added.

Mallory shifted her weight to her left foot, wondering what would happen if she transmuted out of this conversation. “Oh, well, okay then,” she said weakly, tucking a damp lock of hair behind her ear, “I guess I should be going.” She paused a moment, searching for a reason to leave the encounter. “I’m here visiting someone and…” And what? (There was a reason why Mallory had never really gotten into the drama groups in her high school.)

Iris waved her hand, making a small  _ ‘bah’ _ sound. “Oh, they can wait if they’ve got you punching walls like that,” she said good-naturedly, leaning against the wrought-iron gate. “Come on inside, have a drink. We’ve got the best bar in Los Angeles, right here.” With the warm smile and the almost fashionable exterior, Mallory thought that it was no mystery why there were so many spirits trapped in the Hotel Cortez. The poor souls had probably seen the place as a cheap and thrifty place to stay downtown while they were on vacation or business, and had walked unknowingly into almost certain death.

It was really rather cunning, when one stopped to think about it.

“I really need to get going,” Mallory insisted, moving to start walking away from the Hotel - she didn’t know where, just  _ away _ . “My friend - I -”

Iris waved a hand dismissively, glancing backwards towards the hotel. If Mallory concentrated, she could feel the negative energy radiating off of the place from even this safe distance. “Oh, come on,” Iris said nonchalantly, smiling again, “It’ll be on the house. You look like you could use it.”

Mallory  _ could _ use a drink. Just not from here. “I’d hate to create all that extra work for you -”

“Because it’s the Hotel Cortez?” Iris asked, smile fading. If this were a movie, Mallory would have dropped a glass at this moment, or her mouth would have dramatically fallen open like a cartoon character. As it was, she did release a little surprised noise as she stared at Iris, who chuckled darkly. “Like I said, I’ve been working here for almost twenty years.” Iris tilted her head towards the building, and Mallory suddenly had to wonder how the woman had survived such a job for such a long period of time. “I've heard all the rumors that could ever be said about this place, and most of them are nothing more than gossip. Please, come inside. I promise it’ll be worth your while.”

Mallory wanted to say no. Despite whatever other nasty rumors there were about this place, she knew for a fact that Queenie being murdered in here was no rumor. It was then that a huge yawn made its way up her throat, and she covered it with her hand, cheeks turning pink. She didn’t have any money, she was thirsty from all the running she had done, and she was tired. If she had a drink here, then at the very least she might be able to sit down and rest her legs.

There hadn’t been any alcoholic beverages at the Outpost, at least, not for Mallory. The Purples might have gotten some champagne or bourbon at one point, but for Mallory, it had always just been stale water. And she had been grateful for it, every sip. But it had been almost two years since she had felt the wonderful bliss of getting drunk, of losing all her inhibitions and feeling that wonderful forgetfulness wash over her.

Besides. If worse came to worst, Mallory would always have her magic to defend herself with.

“You said this place had the best drinks in LA?” Mallory asked awkwardly, fidgeting with her fingers. Iris beamed, probably more at the prospect of a potential customer than at Mallory agreeing to share a drink with her, but Mallory didn’t really mind. This was a world where people could worry about trivial things like paychecks and customers and have survival be a guarantee, not a goal. Not a target at which to aim.

“That I did,” Iris said, nodding, “I didn’t catch your name…?” Mallory stiffened unconsciously, remembering a video she had once seen in elementary school, explaining the dangers of giving your name to strangers.

“Madison,” Mallory blurted, cringing internally, “Madison Montgomery.” Fantastic. Iris would surely see through that lie right away, and would almost definitely call Mallory out on it. Why did she have to choose  _ Madison _ , of all people, to pretend to be? She could have said her name was Lana fucking Winters, and she would have been less conspicuous.

But Iris only nodded, moving towards the doors to the hotel. “Come on in, Madison,” she said, prompting Mallory to follow, “I’ve never seen anyone that wasn’t impressed by our alcohol menu.” Mallory went after Iris with her fingers splayed, in case she would need to use magic to protect herself from a sudden attack. As she moved closer to the hotel, the building’s innate darkness seemed to almost envelop her, and when Iris pushed open the glass front door, the smell of death wafted out from the lobby. Mallory wrinkled her nose.

Mallory paused for a moment at the threshold. She could turn and run, right now, and never have to think about the Hotel Cortez until she would make sure that Queenie would never get a reservation here. She could vanish in a heartbeat, find herself a break room sofa or a library to sleep in. Or she could go find Michael Langdon and keep her promise, and worry about sleep after he was six feet under. She never had to enter this building.

Instead, she pushed the door slightly more open and stepped into the Hotel Cortez.

The lobby was nicer than she would have expected. Despite the bad energy crackling throughout the building and the spirits she could feel lurking about, the main room was actually genuinely attractive. Mallory had to admire the tasteful gold accents and the air of sophistication about the place. It could have passed for a trendy-because-it’s-old kind of place, if Mallory wasn’t so intimately familiar with what kind of twisted things happened in this building. Even so, she found the decor rather attractive, like it could have been the epitome of fashion and style, once upon a time.

It still actually was rather stylish. A murder hotel could look elegant. Who knew?

“I know it’s not a Holiday Inn, but she’s got a charm to her, once you get to know her,” Iris said, turning to face Mallory, who realized she had stopped walking. She sped up to walk next to Iris, heat rising in her cheeks.

“I just wasn’t expecting it to look so…” She paused, lost in thought for a moment. “...nice.” Iris smiled, but this felt different from the smiles Iris had given her outside. This smile felt like a secret, shared only between the two women.

“Well, Will Drake recently bought the place,” Iris replied, continuing to move towards the staircase in the back of the room, Mallory following suit. “He’s got himself a dream of making it the new hot spot of LA. It’s his influence that you’re seeing.”

Mallory’s attention was on the detail put into the appearance of the place. “Really?” she asked, mind wandering. Whoever built this hotel had probably loved it like a child, had probably had a dream of happy families and sun-tanned tourists coming and going over the years and staying in their hotel. She felt almost bad for them, despite their probably being dead. They couldn’t possibly have wanted their dream to become what it was today.

A cesspool of murder and despair and lost souls.

“Yeah, things have been pretty wild lately,” Iris said as the two came upon the stairs, which presumably would lead to the bar. “Especially with the police breathing down our backs.”

Mallory came back down to earth, neck twisting to glance at Iris. “Police?” she asked, eyeing the woman up and down. When the police started looking into a place like this, it never ended well for the establishment. Unless it was a horror movie. Then it never ended well for the brave team of policemen.

Iris nodded, leaning against the banister as she turned to face Mallory. “There’s been a series of killings lately, and the cops received an anonymous tip-off that the killer has been hiding out here,” Iris explained briefly, giving Mallory the sense that there were a lot of gory details being left out, “It’s nothing to worry about, don’t concern yourself.”

Mallory remembered actually, reading about a serial killer who had been hiding out in the Hotel Cortez. “Yeah, I heard about that,” she mused, remembering all the drama in the news when the series of murders had finally been brought to the press. “Some sort of religious killings, right? Ten Commandments or something?”

Iris froze, one foot on the step above, and Mallory mentally cursed herself. She didn't know how time travel worked, and she didn’t know what the consequences could be from changing the timeline outside of what she had come back to do, but she had a sinking suspicion that she really didn’t want to know.

“Fuck,” she muttered as Iris’s eyes widened as she stared at Mallory.

Mallory took a deep breath, remembering that she had something else on her side - magic. “ _ Obliviscar verba profecti sunt _ ,” she whispered, remembering the spell she had found in Cordelia’s personal library. “ _ Obliviscar verba profecti sunt. Obliviscar verba profecti sunt. Auferetur. Auferetur _ .”

Iris blinked, and for a moment, Mallory feared that the spell hadn’t worked. And then, she feared something worse - that she may have caused permanent damage. Mind magic was always tricky, more delicate than even resurrection. One wrong move and you could unwittingly drive someone to the brink of insanity. There was a reason why that spell had been in Cordelia’s private library, banned to most of the students at the Academy.

Iris shook her head, rubbing at her temples. “What was I saying?” she asked no one in particular, and Mallory felt a wave of relief roll over her, or maybe that was just the blast of air conditioning cooling her sweaty skin.

“The police have been breathing down your necks?” Mallory said gently, hoping that the spell wouldn’t have any nasty side effects. Despite working at the Hotel Cortez, Iris did seem like a genuinely nice person, and Mallory would hate to destroy the woman’s mind.

“Right,” Iris said, nodding, and Mallory sighed as Iris gestured upwards, “The bar is just this way, up the stairs.”  _ She’ll be okay _ , Mallory told herself, hoping beyond hope that that was true.

Mallory hadn’t realized how tired she was until she began to climb the stairs. For a moment, her vision swam and she had to grip the polished banister to keep herself from stumbling downwards. Cordelia herself had warned them about this - magical exhaustion, she had called it. Too much use of difficult or powerful magic in a short period of time. Add that to all the running Mallory had been doing (in  _ heels _ ), and you had yourself an extremely tired witch.

She managed to pull herself up the stairs by the banister, despite the fact that every inch of her body was screaming at her to get some rest as soon as possible. She knew she must look like a mess right now, with her sweat-drenched clothes, and damp hair. At that moment, nothing in the world seemed more inviting than the plush leather couches in the lobby area, but she forced herself to keep following Iris.  _ Once I get up to the bar, I’ll be able to sit down _ , she promised herself.

She wasn’t entirely sure how she made it up the stairs. Maybe God Himself had taken pity on her and given her a little extra energy. But somehow, she found herself on the second floor, taking a seat at the bar, steadying herself with her elbows on the counter. Dimly, she was aware of Iris taking a seat on her right.

“What will it be, babyface?” the bartender asked, shooting Mallory a glowing smile.

Mallory shrugged, staring at the counter. “Don’t you need to see my ID or something?” she asked, picking at a scratch on the surface with her fingernails. She had drank before, when she was in high school and her parents were constantly chauffeuring her from churches to confessionals, trying to figure out what was wrong with their daughter. The stolen bottle of spirits had burned like fire going down her throat, but she had immensely enjoyed the fuzziness that came with partaking. And she had gotten drunk a few times at the Academy with Coco and the other girls, during those late nights when you realized just how fucked your life really was, and just how little you could do about it.

The bartender shrugged, drumming her acrylics against the side of an amber bottle. “It’s the Hotel Cortez,” she said with a wink, “The police are too worried about someone dying on the premises to care if we give drinks to a nineteen-year-old.”

Mallory nodded, relieved that she wouldn’t have to explain her lack of ID. She doubted even she would be able to conjure one magically, exhausted as she was. One good thing about the Hotel Cortez, at least - it didn’t seem to have much of a concept of rules.

The bartender leaned over the counter, resting her chin in her hand. “So,” she said, eyeing Mallory’s sweaty dress and damp hair. “What’s your order?”

As Mallory recited her usual order, she found her eyes wandering about the room, landing on a gorgeous platinum-blonde woman sitting at a corner booth, scanning a menu. There was something ... _ off _ about her, though Mallory couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was as if she was both alive and dead at the same time, and Mallory racked her brains as to how that could be possible.

Iris leaned against the bar, and Mallory turned to face her. “So,” Iris started, taking a sip from her own glass, “what had you in such a rough mood outside?” She turned to the bartender. “I found her punching one of the front columns,” she explained, “which is why her knuckles are so bloody.” Mallory glanced down at her hands, still flecked with little spots of blood. She wondered if those cuts would leave scars.

Mallory took a sip from her drink, and she had to admit, Iris had been right when she said that the Hotel Cortez had the best drinks in town. “Nothing, I just…” She hesitated, wondering how much she should say. How much would these people even believe, if she told the whole truth?

The bartender had picked up an empty glass and was wiping it down with a rag stamped with the initials ‘HC’. “Oh, come on, honey,” she said, shaking out the rag, “spill. I’ve heard all types of crazy in my time working here, nothing surprises me anymore.”

“Wanna bet?” she muttered, picking at the peeling nail polish on her fingers.  _ Nail polish! _ She had forgotten those little things, like chipped polish and the smell of drying nails, during those eighteen torturous months at Outpost 3.

“Trust me, Liz,” said a honey-sweet voice from behind Mallory, making her jump, “that’s not a bet you want to take.” Mallory spun around to see the blonde woman that had been sitting in the corner of the room before, standing right behind her. Mallory didn’t know how she hadn’t heard the woman coming up behind her, what with the killer heels she was wearing, but she suspected that it probably came from something not entirely natural.

A shiver ran down her spine as a thought occurred to her.  _ Could this be the thing that murdered Queenie? _

The bartender rolled her eyes, setting down the glass and picking up another. “It’s rude to sneak up on people, you know,” she said off-handedly, but in a tired sort of way. Mallory got the impression that the bartender was used to dealing with the blonde woman, and had been doing so for a considerably long time.

The blonde woman ignored the bartender, taking the stool to Mallory’s left, giving the younger woman a sniff. Mallory wondered if it was because of the odor she was giving off, what with her sweaty clothes, and suddenly wished she had something else to change into. Or at the very least, a stick of deodorant or a bottle of perfume to cover up the smell.

The woman gave Mallory a knowing smile, as if from a single sniff she could somehow deduce all of Mallory’s hopes and dreams, all of the secrets buried deep inside her soul. “It’s not every day that a witch visits the Hotel Cortez, after all.” Mallory stiffened, scooting ever-so-slightly away from the woman. She had never had someone just  _ know _ that there was something not human about her, not without seeing some display of supernatural power, at least. Mallory again got the distinct sense that there was something  _ off _ about this woman.

“I’m not-” Mallory started, but the woman only laughed, the sound like tinkling little bells.

“I could smell it on you across the room, love,” the woman said, still with that beautiful smile that seemed to light up the whole room while simultaneously making Mallory want to run for her life. “I know witch blood when I smell it.”

Mallory simply stared for a moment as her brain ran through possible explanations as to what this woman could be. “Who are you?” she asked, hoping beyond hope that she would be able to use her magic without passing out if it came to the worst-case scenario. She wasn’t exactly a strong girl, and she knew almost nothing about how to use improvised weaponry. Her magic was her only advantage if things turned violent.

The stranger smiled even wider, but it wasn’t unattractive despite it reminding Mallory of a hunter smiling at its prey just before giving the killing blow.

Mallory was supposed to be the hunter, ridding the world of a prey too deadly to be left alive. Instead, she was sitting in a bar in the Hotel Cortez, and she had the distinct impression that she was no longer in control.

“My name is Elizabeth Johnson,” the woman said, holding her hand out, “but you can call me the Countess.” Mallory shook the other woman’s hand, which felt like baby skin - warm and soft.

“The Countess of what, exactly?”Mallory asked, withdrawing her hand.

The woman blinked. “With that jawline, I’ll be the Countess of whatever you want.”

Mallory nodded, glancing down at her lap. “How often do you use that line?”

For a moment, the Countess seemed taken aback, and Mallory felt a small leap of pride at having been able to surprise this person.The other two women were wearing matching looks of shock, although the bartender looked like she might be about to buy Mallory another drink for that.

The Countess waved a hand to the other two women. “Leave us,” she commanded, and the two hurried away, probably eager to get out of this conversation. Two lions circling one another, waiting for the other to strike, and you didn’t want to be there for the gory ending.

Unless you were a horror fanatic.

“I know what you are,” Mallory said once the other two women were out of earshot. The Countess tilted her head, pale curls spilling over her shoulder. It would have been attractive had Mallory not had a sneaking suspicion about the woman’s intentions.

“And what would that be?” the Countess asked, leaning against the countertop.

_ You still have your magic _ , Mallory reminded herself,  _ if push comes to shove, you can always transmutate out. _ “You’re a vampire,” she said aloud, remembering the books on supernatural beings in the Academy’s library. “You smell like blood, and your heart’s not beating. You’re trying to seduce me, so my guess would be that you’re thirsty for a little witch blood, is that correct?” It would be really embarrassing if Mallory was wrong.

The Countess’s mouth opened, then closed, and Mallory resisted the urge to laugh at her small victory. Instead, she took another sip from her drink, licking her lips. Maybe she did have a little bit of control here, after all. 

Or maybe she was just kidding herself.

The Countess managed another one of those charming smiles, slowly crossing one long leg over the other. “Who says I want your blood?”

Mallory took another sip of her drink as the blessed fuzziness began to set in, mimicking the Countess’s predatory gaze as she pretended to contemplate the other woman’s words. “What else do you want?” she asked, remembering what the book found in the Academy’s library had said about vampires:  _ ruthless and charming, these irresistibly attractive creatures use their cunning and their unnatural beauty to get the blood of their victims. _

The Countess leaned forward, the low neckline of her dress revealing the smooth skin just above her breasts, as if the vampire was teasing the world with the idea of the feel of her bare skin against theirs. “Again,” she stated, running long fingers along the edge of the counter, “it’s not every day that a witch finds herself in the Hotel Cortez, and I’m guessing a powerful one at that. Tell me, love, what had you in such a tussle outside?” The woman’s voice was like satin, soft and luxurious.

Mallory wanted to leave. It had been foolish to enter the Hotel Cortez in the first place, and even more foolish to think that nothing bad would come of it. And she wondered, in that impulsive little corner of her mind, what would happen if she simply stood up and strolled out of there, maybe while holding up her middle finger in a silent “fuck you” to the world and this shitty hotel. But there was something about this woman who called herself the Countess, that both put the young witch on edge and made her feel safe. It was the kind of thing you saw in a high school a lot, how there was always that one girl (or boy, in some cases), that seemed to rule the school from a throne of gold, but was just the most approachable person you knew. Like a magical aura that they were just born with, that pulls you in like a fish on a hook.

Besides. There was always her magic.

“Well, you already know about witches,” Mallory started, draining the last of her glass and setting it on the counter with a  _ ‘clink’ _ . “What else is out there?”  _ How much do you know? How many rumors have fallen on those ears? _

The Countess appeared to be lost in thought as she considered Mallory’s question, and Mallory couldn’t make her eyes leave the woman’s face, which betrayed nothing of her innermost thoughts. “Well, I've lived in this hotel long enough to know that when people die, sometimes they stick around,” she finally said, tongue darting out to lick her lip in a teasing sort of way. “I heard about some alien abductions in the sixties, but that’s all mostly speculation.” She blinked at Mallory, who felt like a specimen under a microscope when pinned by the vampire’s gaze. “What are you after, darling?”

Anyone even remotely familiar with the existence of the supernatural probably knew about ghosts - it wasn’t uncommon for the deceased to stick around in older buildings that had seen lots of horrible things over their many years of life. And the knowledge of witches wasn’t unusual either, ever since Cordelia had revealed their coven to the world. As for the alien abductions, Mallory had never heard anything about those, nor had she read about them in any of the books in the Academy’s library.

“What about the devil?” Mallory questioned, stifling a yawn. “Have you heard about that?” It wasn’t that she was bored with the conversation, quite the opposite, actually. It was more the fact that the couches downstairs were growing more and more tempting by the second.

“I did when I was younger,” the Countess said slowly, as if she were afraid of saying the wrong thing and scaring Mallory off, “but in the same way I believed in God’s mercy. Now, I don’t think that God is real, but I know that Hell is.” The way she said it left no room for argument, no room for an opposing theory. It was thoughts so personal, yet said like they mattered and they didn’t. These were the kind of thoughts you had at midnight or three o’clock in the morning, when your mind just wouldn’t stop going and you were looking at the ceiling of your bedroom and wondering why God, if He was real, would let the world screw itself over so supremely.

The Countess voiced those thoughts like they were both elegant poetry and a cringy line from an unpopular song.

“Yeah,” Mallory said, picking on that same scratch on the counter, “you might be onto something there. I’ve seen so much proof that Hell is real, and yet not a peep from the man upstairs.” She had been wondering about that, too, even when she was still under the identity spell. Hell and the devil had proven to be real over the last three years, after everything that had happened. But Heaven had sent angels to combat the darkness. Humanity had been left to fend for its own, and had Mallory not been capable of  _ tempus infinitum _ , the devil would have won.

Maybe Earth was as good as the shit got. Maybe once you died, you either went to Hell or you stuck around wherever you were unlucky enough to take your last breaths. Or you just ...became nothing. Just an empty body left for someone to bury while your soul just… disappeared. Wow.  _ Thinking happy thoughts, eh? _

The Countess was watching Mallory with those predatory eyes of hers, sizing her up like she might size up an opponent in a wrestling match. “I don’t remember your name…” she said idly.

“Madison Montgomery,” Mallory said, cringing. If the Countess asked, Mallory would just say that it was a coincidence.

_ Fuck. _ Mallory had forgotten that Madison would have been dead in 2015.

The Countess rested her cheek against her chin, in a way that would have seemed inelegant had it been anyone else. “What are you chasing, Madison?” she asked, making eye contact with the other woman, giving Mallory the odd feeling that her very soul was being analyzed by the woman across from her. “This world is a wicked place, but you’ve seen things that could make a grown man weep.”

“How do you know that?” Mallory challenged, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

The Countess smiled, and this one felt different from her other, more seductive grins. “I see it in your eyes. You saw all those awful things, and yet you survived it, and here you are. The flames did not destroy you, rather, they made you more radiant than ever.” She straightened, blinking despite the soft lighting.

“Well - I -” Mallory stuttered, wondering if this woman was flirting or if she was just an ass kisser. Or still thirsting after Mallory’s blood. Either way, she had never been complimented like that before.

“Tell me, Madison,” the Countess interjected, leaning forward on her barstool. “Lay it all out on me. You’re strong, but you need willing ears to listen to all your woes. And mine are  _ very _ willing.”

Mallory suddenly noticed how close the two women were - close enough that, if Mallory wanted to, she could have leaned forward and brushed her lips against the other’s. For a moment, she considered doing just that - pressing her lips into the Countess’s, running her fingers through that silky hair, feeling those soft fingers trailing against her body. It was one of those impulsive thoughts, like when you were using a pair of scissors and wondering what would happen if you suddenly slit your throat. She imagined kissing the Countess would be just as fatal.

Instead, she asked, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

She knew the answer just by looking at the other woman’s predatory grin. “What do you think?” the Countess teased, uncrossing her legs.

“It’s not out of the question,” Mallory replied, biting down on her tongue. She wasn’t uncomfortable being in the presence of a murderer - hell, that could be said of almost all the teachers at Miss Robicheaux’s. “I tried to,” she continued, glancing down at her lap, at the dress still stuck to her skin with sweat. “It would have been my first kill. Whole world on my shoulders, and I couldn't do it.

“Couldn’t work up the courage?” the Countess, asked, and Mallory didn’t miss the disappointment in her voice.

Mallory shook her head. “No, I didn’t have a problem with that part. The little shit just wouldn’t die.”

The Countess’s eyes widened at that statement, and Mallory couldn’t back a small smirk at the other woman’s shock, dire as her circumstances were.

The Countess was leaning even clower now, so that Mallory had no choice but to look into the woman’s eyes. “What was the method, if you don’t mind my asking?” the Countess questioned, barely louder than a whisper, as if murders in the Hotel Cortez didn’t happen as often as rain would fall from the sky.

“I hit him with a car,” Mallory answered. “Four times. I’ve seen people go through less than that and die instantly. Dude just kept getting back up.” She said it like it was a joke. It wasn’t. Not even close.

The Countess rested her hand on the table, and Mallory noticed for the first time the claw-like jewelry on the vampire’s thin hand. Like a stiletto knife, but more fashionable. “Can I offer some advice?” the Countess asked.

Mallory gulped. “What?”

“Was the person you were trying to kill…” The older woman trailed off for a moment, as if lost in her own thoughts. “Are they just particularly resilient, or is there a supernatural explanation as to their lack of dying?”

Mallory considered for a moment. She supposed it could have been possible that Michael Langdon was just naturally difficult to kill, but she suspected that it probably had something more to do with his family tree. “Supernatural.”

The Countess nodded, biting down on her bottom lip as she thought. “So you don’t actually know what will kill him?” she queried, eyes darting to the side as Mallory felt the chilly presence of a lost spirit wander past them. She wondered if the Countess, being neither alive nor dead, could see the spirit.

Mallory shook her head at the Countess’s question, wondering where the other woman was going with this.

“Well then, Madison Montgomery,” the Countess said, and Mallory shifted at the use of her false name, “my advice to you comes from times of old: know thy enemy.”

Mallory’s brow furrowed. “ _ The Art of War _ ?” She had checked that book out from the Academy library when things had started to look really grim, when the prospect of war seemed closer than just the horizon. She supposed that someone else could have gotten more out of it, but Mallory had never been the strategizing type.

“You know the origin?” the Countess asked, eyes wide.

Mallory shrugged. “Yeah, a friend of mine had a copy in her library.” She didn’t feel the need to say any more.

The Countess nodded. “Well, it’s sound. Get close to them. Figure out their weaknesses. Figure out what makes them  _ cry _ .” The woman began tapping her fingers on the counter, the jewelry making it sound like a blade being dragged across a wall. “And when the time is right, show no mercy.”

“Is that what you do?” Mallory asked, eyes flicking away for a moment.

The Countess smiled, again. “Only when the moment is right,” she whispered.

The Countess’s bright eyes darted to Mallory’s lips, and Mallory found her own eyes drawn to the Countess’s, as if by some innate compulsion. Slowly, like a predator stalking its prey, the blonde leaned in, soft lips pressing against Mallory’s own. Electricity ran through her body, sending blaring warning signals through her brain. Every one of her senses was on fire, and for a moment, all Mallory could do was freeze as the vampire caressed Mallory’s lips with her own.

And then she was pushing the Countess away, gasping for air. She practically fell off her barstool, gripping onto the counter as she backed away from the Countess. Her whole body was shaking, and dimly, she was aware that her lip was bleeding, hopefully not from the Countess wanting a sample before the feast. The moment kept replaying in her mind, and Mallory nearly screamed when she bumped into another barstool.

“I’m sorry, I must have overstepped,” the Countess said, standing up and taking a small step in Mallory’s direction. “I should have known you were heterosexual.”

Mallory shook her head, still breathing heavily. “No - I’m not - it’s just I - we just met.” The words didn’t seem to be coming out the way Mallory had envisioned them in her mind, instead sounding jumbled and uncertain.

“I understand completely,” the Countess interrupted, stopping Mallory from babbling further. “I simply thought we had a connection there.”

Mallory took in a deep breath, eyes darting around the dim room. “I - I should probably just get going -” she stuttered, taking another step back.

The Countess frowned. “Oh, but you look exhausted, love.” Taking another step towards Mallory. “Come, stay the night.”

At that moment, Mallory missed her bedroom at the Academy more than ever - the bed with its fresh sheets and soft pillows, the feeling of safety that had always seemed to permeate the Academy’s walls, the soft breathing from the other side of the room. Those had been simpler times, when Mallory’s biggest concerns had been getting up in time for morning classes and remembering to turn in her library books on time. Oh, to have the luxury of being a - somewhat ordinary - teenage witch, who had no idea of what was coming.

But more than that, she missed the assurance of her continued survival. She missed going to bed at night and expecting to do the same tomorrow night, or a week from then, or a year from then. Even at the Outpost, there had never been a guarantee that their shelter wouldn’t have been overrun by cannibals or rabid animals or a repulsive combination of the two, or that she wouldn’t say the wrong thing and end up on the dinner table. Every night had been her last night, every morning a sweet relief. Every hour waiting on the edge of a cliff, hoping you weren’t pushed over the edge.

“I - I don’t do that kind of thing, no thank you,” she stammered, digging her nails into the countertop. “I just - I need to go.” Away from this hotel, with its beautiful facade and its terrible truth.

The Countess took another step towards the young witch. “Come, darling.” She smiled, but even Mallory could tell that it was mostly forced. “I’ll pay for a room for you, no favors required. Just consider it my apology to you.”

Mallory dreamed of a pristine, white building that shone like a beacon of hope over the streets of New Orleans. That, more than anywhere else, was where she wanted to be right now. But that building felt so far away, and she was so,  _ so _ tired. And what was her alternative? Sleeping on a park bench or in a Dumpster? Wandering the city all night, not sleeping at all? She may have been an optimist, but she was not naive. She knew what happened to women who went out on the streets alone at night, and she wasn’t foolish enough to think that she could defend herself from that kind of thing in her weakened state. As repulsive as the idea sounded, the Hotel Cortez was probably her safest option.

She nodded, slowly, taking in another deep breath. “Alright, fine. I’ll stay for the night.”

The Countess’s smile widened, and Mallory was reminded again of a ruthless predator savoring a particularly juicy little morsel. “Excellent,” the woman said, licking her lips, “I’ll go tell Iris, you wait right here, beautiful.”

As the Countess turned to leave, the thought entered Mallory’s mind:  _ maybe the streets would have been safer. _ She hoped beyond all hopes that she was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I said that this chapter would be longer, I meant that it would be 3,000 words instead of 1,000, not over 7,000 words long. I don't know how these things happen.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net, respectively, on August 25th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than those two websites, please contact me immediately.


	3. Fright Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mallory has an... interesting stay at the Hotel Cortez. Warning: contains violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, readers! Here's a really long chapter with some horror and weird bits. :)

Mallory gasped, the sound of splashing water echoing through the room. She wiped sopping hair from her forehead, wrinkling her nose at the acrid scent of iron on the air. For a small moment, she simply allowed herself to float in the lukewarm water as she gazed up at the stone ceiling above her, the flickering candlelight casting odd shadows across the room.

Then she was lurching into a sitting position as it registered where she was. Droplets of water fell from her hair, and she shivered at the frigid air permeating the room.

Mallory glanced around. At first glance, the room seemed empty, despite the ever-present scent of blood. "Hello?" she called out into the silence, teeth chattering.

There was no reply. "Hello?" she tried again, louder this time. Her voice echoed through the building, but there was no response. Outpost 3 was as silent as the grave. Which, Mallory supposed, it was. A tomb for the rich who thought they could live forever just because they could afford the hundred-million dollar ticket.

Mallory gripped the edge of the tub and tried to push herself into a standing position, legs shaking under her weight. She wondered how long she had been out of it.

She raised her head for a secondary glance around the room, and screamed at what she could see. Her legs gave out from under her, and she fell back into the tub, water sloshing over the sides as she gasped, gripping the edge. "Oh my god," she whispered, hugging her knees to her chest. "Oh my god. _Oh my god._ "

 _Deep breaths_ , she told herself. _Deep breaths, Mallory. One after the other, come on. You're no use to anyone if you're hyperventilating._

Slowly, she again gripped the rim of the tub and pushed herself to her feet, reminding herself to take deep breaths all the way. In movies about the apocalypse, the main character was always numb to the gruesome horrors by the time the closing credits rolled around, never blinking an eye at violence or human cruelty or the state of the world. Mallory had never been like that, and she doubted she ever would be. She didn't think she would want it like that, anyway.

She stepped over the edge of the tub, gripping onto the rim to stop herself from slipping. Once she was on even footing she ran across the room to the body splayed across the floor, stopping still for a moment once she got there, staring down.

In life, Myrtle Snow had been the epitome of both sass and fashion. She had been fiercely loyal to Cordelia and the coven, staying by their side through a nuclear apocalypse and the imminent threat of death, throwing witty insults at their enemies without blinking an eye. She had taught a few classes at the Academy, and though her magical powers were admittedly limited, she had always been a force to be reckoned with.

In death, her eyes were wide in shock, her skin unearthly pale, the fire seemingly gone from her aura. There was a gaping wound at her neck, which must have been the source of the blood that coated the floor. Her hand was outstretched, as if she had reached it out towards something - or some _one_ \- in her last moments.

Mallory sunk down to Myrtle's side, gray dress brushing against the stone floor as she fell to her knees. "Please," she whispered, to who she didn't know. "Please, please."

Though she knew it would be futile, she held her hand up to Myrtle's neck. "Oh shit," Mallory swore as her hand came away sticky with blood. "Oh fucking _shit_."

The wound would have killed Myrtle within moments, but Mallory wouldn't have envied her for it. How awful would it be, to choke on your own blood as it spurted from your neck? If Mallory was ever given a choice as to how she would be killed, this definitely wouldn't be high on the list. It was better than being set on fire or drowning, but still didn't seem like a good way to go. Mallory would rather take a gunshot to the head (quick, easy), than a slit throat.

The lack of pulse shouldn't have been a surprise, because even the most inexperienced individual would have been able to know automatically that Myrtle was _dead_ dead. Still, Mallory had been holding on to a tiny hope inside her that maybe a small bit of Myrtle had clung to life, stubborn as the woman was. "Goddammit, Myrtle," she bit out, voice trembling. "God fucking dammit."

Mallory had spent eighteen months knowing that she would probably die. Eventually, their scarce food resources would have run out, and cannibalism would have looked much more appealing to the Purples than it had in the first few weeks of their time at the Outpost. And naturally, the Grays would have been the first to be eaten. She had been a different person then, someone who was thought of as expendable by everyone around her, someone who even _she_ thought of as expendable, in the grand scheme of things.

And she had mourned, during those first weeks. Mourned for a family that the identity spell had allowed her to pretend she had. And maybe it had been something deeper, too, mourning the fact that she would never get to be an artist or a fashion designer like she had dreamed of as a child, mourning that she would never again go on a walk through the park or go to see a show on Broadway or any other thing that she had wanted to do with her life.

She had been surrounded by death for a year and a half, but she had never really seen it. She had known it was coming, for her, for all of them, but she had had no idea what it actually looked like. Now she did, but part of her still wanted to hold onto that innocent version of herself that was only burdened by her own imminent death, not the lives of seven billion people.

She held her hands over Myrtle's lifeless form, imagining her power flowing through her like electricity through circuits; calm at the quiet bits, fatal at the powerful parts. " _Vitalum vitalis_ ," she whispered, the words of the spell like a prayer on her tongue. " _Vitalum vitalis. Vitalum-_ "

She let out a gasp as Myrtle's body seemingly vanished into thin air, leaving her hands hovering above nothing but blood-stained floor. "No," she cried, voice cracking. "No. No, no, no. Please no." She was shaking her head, wet droplets flying from her hair. Repeating the words as if there was a God that was listening to her. Her hands fell to the place where Myrtle's body had been, fingers digging into the stone.

"Come on," she pleaded, tears trailing down her face. " _Come on._ "

She imagined time flowing through the tips of her fingers as if her hands were dipped in water. She imagined that if she could only wrap a finger around the thread that was this moment, that she could turn it back, bring Myrtle back. She could make it all go away. But no matter how much she grasped, every thread she found seemed to slip from her fingers, as if they were coated in grease. It was as if the ability to manipulate time had left her, like her parents had left her at the Academy's doorstep when it became clear that no priest or exorcist would ever be able to cure her.

It wasn't fair. Nothing was ever fair, and that was a universally known truth to anyone that had half a fucking brain, but Mallory wished that things _could_ be fair. It was the same as people wishing for a utopian society - impossible, and yet people still tried to do shit to make it happen. The closest thing to a utopia this world had was Miss Robicheaux's, and that one had been shattered far too easily. That was the thing about a utopia. You think, _how could something so beautiful end?_ And then it ends, and you don't have a backup plan.

Mallory could've philosophized to herself about this for _hours_ , how the world wasn't fair and how the chances of the world ever being fair were less than zero. Instead, she wiped her face with the back and pushed herself to her feet, glancing around the room. What did she do now?

_What was she supposed to do?_

_What would Cordelia have done, had she been in Mallory's position?_

"Cordelia!" Mallory cried as the sound of steel breaking flesh echoed through her memory. Her feet seemed to move on their own, and she found herself standing outside of the room with the tub, in a hallway lined with candles and stained with blood. Cordelia's blood, a dark puddle of it on the floor. And in the center of that puddle, a silver knife right where Cordelia had dropped it. Mallory felt the blood freeze in her veins.

"Cordelia," she whispered, the word reverberating strangely off of the stone walls of the hallway. When she had first arrived at Outpost 3, the first thing she had noticed was the smell, like a boy's locker room odor that someone tried to hide with cleaning chemicals. The second thing she noticed was the echo, the way words traveled strangely through the halls. After eighteen months, she had grown numb to both the smell and the echo, but now her senses seemed to be on hyperdrive, picking up every small detail, every minute little sound or sensation.

She found herself standing on the edge of the landing, woefully without a banister. She didn't want to look down. She knew what she would see. She had not seen the moment of Cordelia's death, but she had heard it, and those sounds would haunt her until the end of time. And she had felt it, the moment when Cordelia was gone and all her power had flowed into Mallory, from one Supreme to the next. Some stories had said that it started in the feet, or in the vagina. They were wrong. It started in the heart, like an aching loss at the death of the Supreme, and from that loss bloomed power. Horrible and beautiful power, all at once.

Mallory looked down.

She gasped, hand moving to her mouth. _So much blood…_ Cordelia's eyes stared upward, towards the heavens, unblinking, limbs bent out at awkward angles. Dark blood was spread around her in such a way that it looked almost like wings. Angel wings.

"Oh my god," Mallory whispered, voice shaking, "Oh my god." Cordelia, dead. Myrtle, dead. And everyone else that had promised to hold Langdon off - also dead, judging by the silence that permeated the Outpost. A fatal kind of silence, the kind that sucked all the air out of the room and left you gasping for oxygen. The kind that came when everyone else in the building had died.

Mallory ran down the stairway, only slowing to make sure she wouldn't slip and plummet down the stone spiral staircase. Her breaths were coming in short bursts, as if her lungs had suddenly shrunk to a tenth of their normal size. The smell of death was even stronger than it had been in the bathing room, and it only seemed to grow the closer Mallory got to the former Supreme's corpse.

Her legs gave out as she reached Cordelia's side, but she barely noticed the small pain as her knees, bare under her uniform-dress, skidded against the floor. Her hand found Cordelia's, cold and limp and utterly devoid of the life that had filled the older witch only - minutes? hours? days? - earlier. Mallory bent over, pressing her lips into the rough skin of Cordelia's hand, willing the pulse in her wrist to beat again.

" _Vitalum vitalis_ ," she whispered, begging whatever higher being might happen to be listening to take pity on her, on her coven of witches that had been left as the final defense between humanity and annihilation. Didn't they deserve a happy ending, more than anyone else? Wasn't this what the universe owed to them?

" _Vitalum vitalis_ ," she whispered again, as Cordelia remained lifeless, empty gaze still trained on the ceiling. Nothing was happening, despite all of Mallory's efforts. It was as if all her magic had been drained, and she was powerless as she sat on the stone floor. " _Vitalum vitalis!_ " she tried again, louder, but it was of no use. Her magic simply refused to work as it once had.

Mallory moved her other hand to Cordelia's shoulder, giving the former Supreme a small shake, as if she were simply asleep and needed to be woken up. "Come on, Cordelia," she pleaded, voice hoarse and rough against her throat. "Come on." Cordelia needed to wake up, she needed to.

It might have been a trick of Mallory's imagination, but she could have sworn that Cordelia twitched ever-so-slightly. Mallory exhaled as hope bloomed through her core, like a spot of sunshine on an otherwise miserable day, a light in the darkness. A smile spread across her face, and for a brief, beautiful moment, Mallory believed that maybe, just maybe things could get a little bit better than they were.

And that was when Cordelia vanished.

Mallory felt as though she had been hit by a cement truck as her hands fell to the hard floor. No. _No, please no. Oh god, please no. No no no no no. Please no._ "No," she whispered, tears threatening to turn her into a blubbering mess. "No no no. Please. _Please_." Who was she begging? There was no one out there to hear her tearful pleas.

She folded in on herself, the way she hadn't since she was a small child, when she wanted to just curl up and be small, because maybe if she was smaller her problems wouldn't seem as big. She pressed into where Cordelia's body had been only seconds before, the ground still stained with her blood. She couldn't breathe as sobs wracked her body, her cries echoing through the cylindrical space.

"Fuck!" she screamed, punching the stone with the hand that had been holding onto Cordelia's, pain shooting through her nerves. She wanted her fingers to break. She wanted to hear the snap of bone. She wanted it to _hurt_.

If only so she could match the agony ripping through her more fiercely than any physical pain ever could.

If she could have laid there for an eternity, on that floor still sticky with the blood of the former Supreme, she would have. What's the use, anymore? What was waiting for her, beyond this room? Nothing but a world destroyed, a world that she, with all her power, could not save.

"Fuck," she sobbed, running her fingers against the smooth stone, dust and blood collecting under her nails. "Oh, fuck. Oh, no no no no no. No." She tucked her head in between her legs, sniffling. Why did it have to be her? Why was she, of all people, the sole survivor of Outpost 3? Couldn't there have been anyone who survived alongside her? She would even take one of the entitled Purples over this silent tomb of a building, because at least then she wouldn't be alone. At least then she would have something to take her mind off of all the death that surrounded her.

She wanted to go home, to the Academy. She wanted to be an ignorant teenager again, and get drunk and kiss boys and girls and have no clue about what was coming for her. And maybe that was the world's cruelest torture, not death or agony or destruction, but losing the times when you were happy and things were bright, because you took those times for granted, because you always think those times will last forever. Well, spoiler alert: they don't.

"Don't you get it?" a silky-smooth voice rang through the room, and Mallory flinched turning her head towards the source. Michael Langdon stared down at her, not a drop of blood on him. Looking as put together as he had when he had first arrived at the Outpost.

"What?" Mallory hiccuped, forcing herself into a sitting position.

Langdon laughed, and though everything about the man was sinfully beautiful, from his looks to his voice to the way he carried himself, the laugh sounded like poison on Mallory's ears. Toxic, fatal. He bent down, so Mallory had no choice but to meet his ice-blue eyes, devoid of all emotion, as he smiled gleefully at her. "You killed her, Mallory. _You did_."

Mallory felt herself shaking her hands as small sobs still made their way up her throat. "No, I didn't," she gasped, the sounds of death that she had heard from the tub again replaying in her mind. "She…"

Langdon tilted his head to the side, blond locks spilling over his shoulder as he gave her one of those eerie smiles. "So you're saying that she still would have done that if it weren't because of you?"

Mallory choked on a gasp as his words echoed through the space and through Mallory's mind, repeating themselves in a sadistic fashion. She pushed herself backwards, away from those shark-like eyes, and he only watched her in silent laughter.

"I - I didn't want anyone to die for me," she stammered, feet kicking against the floor in a desperate effort to get as far away from this place as possible. "I never wanted her to do that." _And I would have happily taken her place_ , is what Mallory didn't say. Because Cordelia deserved to survive far more than Mallory did.

Langdon frowned, forehead wrinkling as he scrutinized her, like a scientist studying a particularly fascinating specimen. He pushed himself to his feet, rising slowly. He was tall enough that Mallory had to tilt her head in order to look at him, and the muscles in her neck protested at the movement.

"That's what they all say," Langdon said darkly. "Face it, Mallory. You and I are exactly the same. The only difference between us is that I admit to my sins." All this said with an air of grace about him, as if he were reciting poetry.

Tears trailed down Mallory's cheeks as she continued to push herself away from him, away from the person who had stolen her life from her. She nearly screamed as her back hit the wall, letting out a gasp as his words swirled through her head. "No - no - I wouldn't - I -"

Glass shattered as Mallory gasped awake, pushing herself away from the sweat stained sheets. A scream left her throat as she panted, a cool breeze blowing her hair into her face. She gasped for air, finding it surprisingly fresh as she gulped it down, taking in lungfuls desperately. She nearly fell out of the bed, dragging the musty blanket down with her as she curled herself into a ball in one of the corners, oxygen precious as she gulped it down.

_Where was she? What was happening?_

The events of the past twenty-four hours came to her in flashes and glimpses, sounds and feelings, and she shivered, wrapping the blanket closer around herself. She was in her room at the Hotel Cortez, that the Countess had bought for her after the two had bonded over martinis. It was the year 2015, four years before ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population would be killed in a nuclear apocalypse. The horrible things that she had witnessed could still be prevented. She still had time.

Mallory had never officially performed the Seven Wonders, and she had never actually done anything that could remotely resemble divination. But she had the feeling that _that_ , whatever it had been, had not been a simple dream.

"Oh," she breathed, "fuck fuck fuck."

She dug her fingernails into her palms, the pain grounding her in the moment. Keeping her mind from wandering off to dark places. She bit her lip as her breaths evened out, reminding herself to stay focused. "It's alright," she whispered to herself, like a secret passed from ear to ear, except with only her own ears to hear it. "They're alive. Shh. Shh." She was starting to feel slightly guilty for the shout that had escaped her upon waking, and hoped anyone in the neighboring rooms would chalk it up to the hotel's ghostly residents.

She leaned against the wallpaper, the musty smell reminding her of the scent of old books, the way she would sometimes press her nose to the pages of a novel purchased from a second-hand store and smell the time in those pages. She had always been drawn to old books, books with a unique history. She loved the smell, and even in her youth, she had been able to feel time converging in that object. And while old smells elsewhere were generally unpleasant, this one made her feel safe. This one made her feel like she was back home.

"Oh god," she whispered as the images from her vision replayed through her mind. It was a warning, she knew - that if she didn't make a lasting change to the timeline soon, if she didn't eliminate Michael Langdon, that horrible future would still come to pass, and this time, not even _tempus infinitum_ would be able to prevent it.

She reached a hand up to her face, and felt her cheeks wet with tears. She hiccuped, curling her legs closer to her body as another shiver coursed through her. "Fuck," she swore under her breath, feeling the panic washing over her. " _Fuck_."

She didn't know how long it was that she sat there, silently crying as she curled her body into a tight ball. She just wanted to not exist for a while. To simply float in a blissful sea of nothingness, where she wouldn't have to think about the mounting pressure building up on her shoulders. Where she could simply drift through the void, and be free of this constant worry.

A particularly strong gust of wind blew through the room, and Mallory gasped at the sudden cold. Where was this wind coming from? Gripping the edge of the mattress, she pushed herself to her feet, glancing around the small room, still in her corner. Her eyes landed on a scattering of broken glass on the floor, under the window - the source of the breeze. She remembered the sound of glass shattering when she had woken up, and realized it must have been the window breaking.

"Oh shit," she muttered. Did she break the window, in her panic? In that heavy set of emotion, had her powers lashed out and shattered glass? The was one of the Seven Wonders, performed without even thinking. Normally it required much more effort on Mallory's part, or at least the conscious intention. Broken glass, and visions of the future in a haunted hotel. There had to be some kind of connection there.

No matter what the broken window meant, it was broken now, and she didn't have any money to pay for the repairs, and this hotel room wasn't hers. She could be sued for the repair, though she doubted that the Hotel Cortez would want any sort of court looking too closely at it. It was a possibility though, and because of that, she could not allow anyone to discover that the window had ever been broken in the first place.

Her eyes fluttered closed as she raised her hands, relieved to feel the power flowing through them. "Come on," she whispered, brow furrowed in concentration. "Please." It wasn't even a matter of repairing the window - it was the reassurance that she could still do this, could still manipulate the threads of time like she had so many times before.

Her pinky curled around a thread of time, and she gripped onto it tight, feeling the power coursing through her veins. Slowly, the broken bits of glass began to move back into place, the sounds of their clicking quiet and loud all at once. Mallory dared to open one eye, and found herself thinking that it looked more like a reversed time lapse video of glass breaking than it did actual magic. It felt as though Mallory was watching this as an outsider than the person creating this as the shards all flew back into, the cracks magically closing themselves over. She kept her hands up for a moment longer before dropping them, releasing that thread of time as she did. A sigh of relief escaped her as the window remained intact.

"I need to get out of here." She ran a hand through her tangled hair, combing it out of her face. She didn't think she could stay in this hotel any longer, not if she wanted to get some decent sleep. The next time she awoke, it would probably be under the blade of a particularly malicious spirit. Or the Countess. Either way, she'd rather not find out.

The green tile in the bathroom was cold under her feet, and it felt nice, like a gallon of ice cream on a hot summer's day. As she flicked on the light switch, her eyes were drawn to her reflection in the mirror over the sink. A slim nightgown, borrowed from the Countess, made her feel more naked than dressed, with the lightweight material and the way it hugged her form in all the most inconvenient places. She wondered how other women could wear something like this without wanting to wrap to wrap a blanket or a robe about themselves.

Her hair was a tangled mess, though she had at least been able to wash it off with a hot shower and a bottle of lemon-scented shampoo earlier that night. The dark circles under her eyes reminded her almost of a raccoon, and she wondered (not for the first time) if there was some sort of spell that might increase her energy levels. The remnants of tears were still visible on her cheeks, and she let out a small sigh, moving to stand in front of the sink. With one hand, she turned the hot water faucet, holding a washcloth under the running water. She leaned closer to the mirror as she wiped off her face, thoughts wandering elsewhere. Namely, to a street not far from here, and what had happened on that street today.

She didn't understand it. When she had gone back, she swore she had distinctly locked onto the moment when Michael Langdon would be most vulnerable. And yet she hadn't been able to kill him. Should she go back further? There was a bathtub in her hotel room, in the same room she was standing right now. She could probably fill it with water and try to find Michael Langdon at a more vulnerable time in his life. She could go back to when he was a toddler, or even to when he was a baby, and snap his neck. She could go even further back, and convince his poor mother to get an abortion.

But she knew, logically, that it wouldn't work. She would need to have something of Langdon's, an object or at least something with his DNA. And even if she could get a hold of a strand of his hair or one of his T-shirts, she had no guarantee that she would be able to successfully perform _tempus infinitum_ again, after already being in the past. Was it worth the risk, that she might die in the process? _No_ , she decided. She was the only person who knew the consequences of Michael Langdon being left alive. And she was the only person who knew that he needed to be killed.

"Ugh." She closed her eyes, massaging her temples with her thumb and pointer finger. She could feel a nasty headache building up, and sent a few well-thought swear words to whoever thought that it was a good idea for people to get hungover after indulging in alcoholic beverages. She knew she shouldn't have accepted that free drink earlier.

Walking back into the main area, she found the dress she had been wearing yesterday draped over the back of the chair where she had left it upon declining one of the maid's offers to get it washed for her. The Countess had promised Mallory that she could borrow one of her old outfits, but given Mallory's rather impromptu leaving, that wouldn't be an option. Her hand went up the thin strap of the nightgown, moving to slide off her shoulder.

"You alright, kid?" a rough asked from behind her, and Mallory jumped, letting out a small yelp as her dress slipped from her fingers, onto the brown carpet. Turning around, she saw a frizzy-haired woman sitting in the chair her dress had been draped over only moments before. In one hand, the woman held a lit cigarette that gave off a rather nasty odor, and the other was resting on the arm of the chair, fingers tapping silent little patterns.

"Jesus," Mallory muttered as the woman took a drag from her cigarette, blowing a puff of gray smoke in Mallory's direction.

The woman gestured to the bed, a bored expression on her face. "You want a hit?" she asked, pulling her leopard-print coat closer around herself.

Mallory didn't look away from the stranger, eyeing her dated hairstyle and outfit, the blotched mascara probably ruined by who knew how many tears. "You're a ghost," she said, feeling the lack of life radiating from the woman's form. "Aren't you?" She was at the Hotel Cortez, of course she would run into a ghost. Not running into a ghost at the Hotel Cortez was like not running into a princess at Disney World. She just hoped this one was more harmless than some of the other more notorious spirits at the hotel.

The woman raised her eyebrows, licking her lip as she studied Mallory. "Well," she said, taking another puff from her cigarette, "that makes you smarter than ninety-seven percent of the people in this shithole." She leaned back in the chair, leather creaking under her weight. (Did ghosts have weight, or was it simply an illusion cast by the spirit?)

Mallory's eyes flicked to the bag at the foot of the chair that hadn't been there before - the spirit must have brought it in with her. She probably didn't like people pointing out that she was dead, now that Mallory thought about it. It probably ruined that feeling of pretending she was alive. "I'm sorry," Mallory stammered, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, "I just - it's been a long night."

There was a moment of silence. It wasn't awkward or pleasant or bad or good, it just was. And maybe that was true for a lot of things.

The woman blew a puff of gray smoke in Mallory direction, and Mallory felt as though she were being evaluated. It wasn't a particularly nice feeling, but Mallory kept still as the ghost surveyed her from head to toe. Whatever the woman was looking for, Mallory must have had it, because the spirit offered Mallory a close-lipped look. "I'm Sally McKenna."

"Mallory," she replied, flinching at the use of her real name. It seemed that she either came up with awful fake names or gave her real name without thinking elsewise. She could only hope that Sally wasn't the type to gossip about the people that stayed in this hotel, at least not with the Countess or anyone else who didn't know her real name.

Sally nodded,gesturing to the bag at her feet. "You want some?"

Mallory hesitated. This was different from an alcoholic beverage every now and then. But a single dosage never hurt anyone, right? "Why not?" she said, shrugging. Trying to appear like this was natural for her.

It wasn't.

Sally smiled, reminding Mallory of a vulture coming across a fatally wounded animal. Bending over, the spirit dug through her bag before retrieving a small box, from which she pulled out a thin cigarette, offering it to Mallory, who took it carefully. Who knew? It might bite her. Finding a lighter, Sally clicked it, creating a small burst of flame, holding it in Mallory's direction. Mallory held the end of the cigar in the flame, the way she had seen it done before.

Sally took a drag from her own cigar as she straightened, again leaning into the leather chair. "So," she started, clearly waiting for something.

Mallory attempted to mimic Sally's graceful way of inhaling the smoke, instead choking on what had to be the most vile thing that had ever entered her mouth. Gripping her throat, she gagged on the acrid smoke, trying to dispel the smoke from her lungs. "What the fuck was in that?" she managed to choke out, voice hoarse.

Sally laughed at Mallory's struggle, blowing another puff of smoke in Mallory's direction. "The good shit, that's what."

"Fuck the good shit," Mallory grumbled, bending over to pick her dress up off the floor. It still smelled of the previous day's exertion, but hopefully she would be able to find something else to wear soon. Until then, the dress would have to do.

Mallory began to pull the dress up over the nightgown, turning away from Sally as she did. "Could you please leave?" she asked, tossing her cigarette into the small trash basket as she pulled her dress over her shoulders. There was silence from the other side of the room, and so Mallory slipped off the nightgown, leaving it draped over the bed where hopefully the Countess would find it. Grabbing her bra from where she had thrown it on the bedside table, she turned towards the window, nearly jumping out of her skin when she saw Sally still sitting in the armchair, dark eyes glimmering in the faint light.

"Sally?" Mallory asked, taking a step towards the ghost.

Sally had moved her bag to her lap, and was digging through it, eyes cast downwards. "You're going to leave," the woman observed darkly, "aren't you?"

Mallory gulped against the sudden lump in her throat. She knew it must have been lonely, being damned to live out one's eternity in a hotel that didn't exactly have the sunniest of dispositions, and she did feel slightly bad about all the spirits trapped here. But unlike most haunted residences, this hotel actually had people regularly occupying it, so surely it wasn't _too_ hard to find company. "I think so," Mallory replied, fidgeting with the clip on her bra strap. "Hopefully."

Dear God, why did she add that last word? Like she was rubbing in the fact that she got to leave and Sally didn't.

"They always leave," Sally said sadly, rough voice trembling. "Even the ones who say they won't. Here's a lesson for you, free of charge, kid." Sally took another drag from her cigarette, though this time she didn't blow the smoke Mallory's way. "Nobody ever keeps their promises."

Sally pulled two matching syringes from her bag, smiling sadly as she looked down at them. "But you can," she continued, gazing at the clear liquid within them.

Mallory felt fear race through her, like a shock of static electricity. Taking a step back, flinching as her leg hit the edge of the mattress.

"What's that?" she asked, nodding to the syringe as an odd feeling swept over her. Like deja vu, only different in way that she couldn't explain. Just that something bad was about to happen.

Sally held out one of the syringes to Mallory, who took it carefully, holding it as far away from herself as possible. The feeling in her gut was mounting by the second. "We'll take it together, okay?" Sally said, tears running down her cheeks despite the soft smile she wore. "For you and me, Mallory. You and me." The way she said that sent chills up Mallory's spine, and the feeling got even worse, like she was about to throw up.

Mallory let out a gasp. That was what Sally was doing! There was probably enough heroin in that dosage to kill an elephant. Mallory would be dead in literal seconds if she put the contents of that syringe into her body. Dropping as if it had burnt her, Mallory took a quick step away, letting out a small gasp.

"I never should have stayed here," Mallory murmured, remembering how her first instinct had been to get as far away from this hotel as possible. She should have trusted that instinct, instead of overlooking it in favor of a free alcoholic beverage and a place to rest her legs.

God, she was so stupid!

Mallory hurriedly pulled her bra on under her dress, hastily fastening it. The dress was unzipped, her hair was still a mess, and she had no idea where she had left her socks, but it would have to do. The alternative was spending more time in the Hotel Cortez. Sally watched with interest as Mallory practically ran to the door, sliding her feet into her heeled boots.

"You'll never make it out alive!" Sally called after her. Mallory ignored her, hurriedly leaving the room and slamming the door shut behind her.

Mallory fell back against the wall, panting. "Shit," she swore, eyes fluttering closed for the briefest of moments. She made a mental note to bring a barrel's worth of sage the next time she set foot on any sort of haunted location.

Her moment of rest spent, Mallory straightened, making her way towards the elevator, knowing it was just around a few corners. She remembered the route she had taken to get to this room, tired as she had been at the time. She just wanted to get out of here.

Until she heard the screaming.

It was coming from behind one of the doors. Room seventy-eight. "Please!" a voice, distinctly female, was pleading. "Please! Stop! Somebody help me!" Mallory was frozen, rotted to the spot. Helping this woman would cause ripples in the fabric of time, be they small or large. In the original timeline, without Mallory present in the hotel, the woman would have undoubtedly gone unrescued.

But on the other hand, wasn't Mallory's whole reason for travelling back in time in the first place to save lives? Didn't she go back already intending to change the future? And even if she took all the possible dangers of changing the timeline into account, could she really let someone be murdered and do nothing to try and stop it?

"Fuck me," she muttered.

With a wave of her hand, the lock on the door clicked open. She pushed it open, stepping into the dimly-lit room. A small gasp escaped her lips.

Laying sprawled across a green couch was a young woman with bright red hair, her jeans and T-shirt covered in blood. Fear alight in wide eyes. And standing over her, holding a wicked-sharp knife, a man - well, not quite a man. A spirit, wearing what looked to be formal attire with a hairstyle and moustache that wouldn't have been out of place in an old movie.

The spirit glanced away from the woman as Mallory entered the room, eyes widening. He could have been handsome if it weren't for the spots of blood on his face and outfit. For a moment, Mallory could only stare at the sight before her as the feeling she had gotten when Sally had handed her the syringe returned full swing.

"Can't you see I'm busy?" the spirit protested, as if Mallory had interrupted him in the middle of paperwork or a phone call, not what would surely be a brutal murder.

Mallory ignored the ghost's complaints, instead waving her hand and willing the world to obey her command. The knife flew from the spirit's hand, embedding itself in the wall behind him. He whirled around, briefly turning away from Mallory as the blade shook from the momentum.

"Fascinating," the spirit muttered. He didn't seem mad that Mallory had prevented his kill, as he had before, more intrigued now that Mallory had displayed her powers.

"Croatoan!" Mallory shouted, remembering the banishing spell Miss Cordelia had drilled into all of their heads. Which had also been on _My Roanoke Nightmare_ , where everyone said it worked. If it was on reality television, that made it real, right?

The spirit stared at her in utter shock, and Mallory exhaled, waiting for the moment when he would disappear. What happened next was the opposite of what she had expected: he laughed.

"Your smells are impressive," the spirit said, humor still ringing in his accented tone, "I'll give you that. But your banishing could use some work."

Mallory was taken aback. "But -"

The ghost rolled his eyes, as if he were already bored of the conversation. "That kind of spell only works on forest ghosts and the like, my dear."

Of course it did.

The spirit moved away from Mallory, to the wall where the blade was still embedded. With a grunt, he pulled it from the wall, leaving a small hole in the faded wallpaper. A devilish smile spread across his features. "You'll find," he explained, turning to face Mallory with the knife in hand, "that the spirits in this hotel are not so easily done away with."

Mallory took in a deep breath, stepping further into the room. It looked like any other suite in the hotel, except for the record player in the corner next to a box with the kinds of records that would make a collector swoon. "Who are you?" she asked, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.

The spirit began to move towards MAllory, still with that good-natured smile on his face. "I'm James Patrick March," he said, stopping as he reached the couch. "I built this hotel."

Mallory remembered feeling pity for whoever had built this hotel, earlier that night. She remembered thinking that they surely would not have wanted something they put so much into to become what it was today. But looking at this spirit standing before her now, with a knife in his hand and a manic smile on his face, she had no doubt that this was exactly what he had wanted the hotel to become.

"Please don't kill me," the woman on the couch begged, and Mallory glanced towards her, having momentarily forgotten that she was there. "Please don't." She turned towards Mallory, tears shining in her eyes. "Please," she pleaded. "Help me."

March glanced at the woman, as if he too had forgotten that she was there. _He's going to let her go_ , Mallory thought as the spirit slowly lowered his blade, and she saw the woman deflate from relief. Then, faster than Mallory's eyes could track it, the knife was flying up against the woman's throat, cutting it before anyone else could make a move. She gasped, hands flying up to her neck to stop the blood spurting from the wound.

Then she went still.

It was over in seconds, yet the images would haunt Mallory forever.

March turned to Mallory, a wicked glint in those dark eyes. "I suggest you run, dear," he said, licking a spot of blood off his lip. "Before her fate becomes yours. You'll find that your resurrection spells aren't worth much in this place."

 _This was what killed Queenie. Or what will kill her._ The realization was sudden and brutal.

Mallory didn't need to be told twice. She turned out of that hotel room. And she ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love confusing the readers by starting the chapter with a dream sequence.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.Net, respectively, on September 11th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than those two websites, please contact me immediately.


	4. Playing Pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mallory checks up on the coven, and makes a visit to a nearby hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I don't particularly like how this chapter turned out, or, y'know, it's existence in general, but I couldn't figure a way to go without it, so here we are.

Transmutation. One of the Seven Wonders. Relatively easy to perform, but incredibly draining if not done in moderation.

Mallory nearly fell forwards where she appeared, having to brace her hand against a table to stop herself from collapsing. She had been teleporting from building to building for almost an hour now, trying to find someplace empty. Most of the other places she had tried had either had someone in another room that she didn’t want to risk an encounter with, or they had a security system that automatically started a blaring alarm at her appearance in the building.

This was the first place she had found that had neither.

Exhaustion was creeping up on her, more fiercely than it had been when she had first entered the Hotel Cortez. She groaned, massaging her forehead with her hand. She could have passed out right then, and would have been asleep by the time her head made contact with the carpeted floor. And she would have slept better than she ever had in the past eighteen months.

“Get it together, Mallory,” she told herself, blinking forcefully. She sighed, near-falling into one of the desk chairs.

The building was a public library, closed up for the night. There were security cameras, but there was no little red light indicating they were powered on, and Mallory’s guess was that whoever ran the building trusted their locks enough to think that they didn’t have to leave the cameras running overnight. Mallory guessed that she was in the nonfiction section (or, more accurately, the nonfiction  _ floor _ ), judging by the signs. The walls were lined with shelves, and any spare bit of wall space had a poster advertising a coming event.  _ Wednesday at seven, don’t miss the book club! Friday at noon, children’s story time. Don’t be late! _

Imagine a world where those things still happened.

In the center of the room, there was a long desk table with a bank of computers. That was where Mallory was sitting now, in one of the swivel chairs that lined the table. From this spot, she could see all the glowing red exit signs and all the floor-to-ceiling windows that showed the glowing lights of downtown Los Angeles. If she needed to make a quick escape without relying on transmutation, then she could.

She jiggled the mouse to the computer directly in front of her, and a blue home screen popped up. She worried that she might be required to sign in to use the device, but, luckily for her, that wasn’t the case. It was simple enough for her to open Google and bring up the search bar. For a moment, she simply stared at the screen, wondering what she should search up first.

After a bit of consideration, she typed “New Orleans witches” into the search bar, and hit enter. The first result that came up was the official Miss Robichaux’s Academy Instagram page, and Mallory clicked on the link, shifting impatiently in her seat while the website loaded.

The first thing that came up was a picture of the Academy’s exterior, the pristine white walls and Greek-esque columns looking exactly as Mallory had remembered them. She nearly burst into tears at that sight alone, and she wiped at her eyes with her sleeve, reminding herself that she still had more to look for now that she had definite proof that her coven was still alive.

Still, she couldn’t help herself from scrolling down to look at more of the pictures. There was Zoe Benson, teaching a class of middle-school aged witches with a warm smile on her face. There was Queenie, winking and smiling at the camera in front of the school. Madison Montgomery and Misty Day were notably absent from the website, since they would have still been dead at this point in time, and Coco wasn’t in any of the pictures because she wouldn’t have started going to the Academy until 2017. Two years from now.

And there was Miss Cordelia. There were pictures of her working in the greenhouse, speaking to the student body, and ones of her smiling and laughing with Queenie and Zoe. Mallory paused for a moment on a photo of Miss Cordelia greeting a group of new pupils. Mallory remembered when she had been one of those girls, once upon a time. It felt like that had been a lifetime ago now, though it had only been - what? Six years?

A lot can change in six years.

If this had been the original timeline, she would have been dropped off at the Academy a few months from now. As it was, right now she should have still been living with her mom and dad in Florida, but the spell had brought her directly to Los Angeles, right next to a shiny car that happened to have the doors unlocked. She wondered if she had simply taken 2015 Mallory’s place in this timeline, or if there was another Mallory still in Florida, with her parents. Mallory hadn’t exactly had the opportunity to learn the exact mechanics of time travel.

Mallory scrolled down on the webpage, and found another picture, this one of the entire current student body along with Queenie, Zoe, and Cordelia. Mallory hovered her mouse over the faces of those she had known best, a small smile breaking out across her face. “Look at that,” she mused, scrolling down to see the caption. “Still going strong.”

It was a relief to see her sister witches alive and well and  _ happy _ . Oblivious of the coming slaughter. Simply living their everyday lives. Learning and teaching magic, mastering new spells, wandering throughout the city of New Orleans. Despite knowing that her use of  _ tempus infinitum _ would have reversed all of their deaths, it was still nice to see confirmation that they were all still alive. That they were all still  _ here _ , in this world. In Mallory’s world.

And it reminded Mallory again of why she had gone back. Her primary intention was not to kill or remove someone from the timeline. It was not to end lives, but to save them. Seeing the smiling faces of her fellow witches helped her to remember that. That she wasn’t here to kill Michael Langdon, but to save all those smiling faces. And if killing Michael Langdon was what needed to be done to accomplish such a thing, then so be it.

But as much as she would have liked to, she couldn’t sit there and look at pictures of her once-deceased coven all night long. Opening another tab, she again pulled up the search bar. She contemplated on which search terms she should use, wondering if certain details might tip someone off that she was planning to commit homicide after already having attempted it once.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she typed in “hit and run Westchester Place”. She hoped the event and the street where it happened would be innocent enough. Assuming that this would have made the news, which she hoped it had. Otherwise, this might look like she had had something to do with it. The last thing she needed was to have the police on her trail on top of everything else.

There was a news article from a local news site that Mallory thought could probably be accurate. Mallory held her breath while she clicked on it, wondering if she was about to see her own face next to the words ‘wanted for hit and run’. Maybe a video interview with Michael Langdon himself, looking right in the camera while talking about how she was incredibly dangerous and needed to be brought to justice as soon as possible. Undoubtedly knowing that she would be watching.

There were none of those things. According to the article, no video footage had been captured of the perpetrator of the alleged murder attempt - all they had was an eyewitness account from the jogger that had called the police, describing a young woman who was around five feet tall with dirty blonde hair and a black dress. There were probably a thousand women in Los Angeles who could have fit that description.

And there weren’t any interviews with Langdon, either. All the article said was that a fourteen-year-old had been taken via ambulance to a nearby hospital, and that doctors were optimistic about a full recovery despite him having to have surgery. (It was kind of disappointing that that had been all the damage had been able to cause.) The article never mentioned Langdon’s name or any other details about him apart from his age and the hospital that he was in.

But now, at least, Mallory knew where she could find him for round two.

“Shit,” Mallory mumbled, running her fingers through a particularly nasty tangle in her hair. It would have been a pleasant surprise if she had discovered that Langdon had died in the ambulance ride, or on the street, or in the hospital, despite his resilience earlier. But the world was never that convenient, and life was never that easy. As much as she hated the idea, she was going to have to seek him out again.

And once she had done that, she would kill him. And this time, she would make certain that even he would not be able to survive.

After a moment, she shut all her tabs, holding down on the computer’s power button. She didn’t bother to clear her history, since she figured the library administrators probably only cared about people going on PornHub or the darkweb, and wouldn’t bother to look through a news site or an Instagram page. And even if they did, there was nothing suspicious about someone searching up local news and checking out a popular social media account.

As she surveyed the room, her eyes fell on one of the plum-colored leather couches in the far corner of the room. She pushed herself up from her chair with a groan, rubbing at her forehead. She made her way across the room much like a zombie might have walked, and collapsed into the couch. She swore she had never lain anywhere more comfortable than here.

_ A couple hours of hours of sleep won’t hurt _ , she rationalized as her eyes fluttered shut.  _ Just a few… hours…  _

* * *

“Wake up!” A harsh, unfamiliar voice shouted, and Mallory opened her eyes before shutting them tightly at the onslaught of light.

“Wha…” Mallory groaned, rubbing at her eyelids.

“This is city property,” the same voice exclaimed, and Mallory felt an unfamiliar hand practically dragging her into a sitting position, “and you are trespassing. I have every right to call the police.”

Mallory’s eyes fluttered open fully, falling on an older woman with grayish-brown hair and round Harry Potter-style glasses. Mallory remembered transmutating into the library the previous night and falling asleep on one of the couches, but she should have been long gone before anyone had arrived here! She should have left hours ago! “Shit,” she swore under her breath, still blinking at the bright near-white light. “I…”

“Don’t ‘shit’ me, young lady,” the woman scolded, crossing her arms as she glared down at Mallory. “Your generation thinks that they can just waltz into a place and treat it like they own it.”

Mallory rubbed at her forehead as the woman waited for - what? An explanation? A series of excuses, one more convoluted than the next? Her entire origin story?

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Mallory started, “I -”

“Don’t be sorry,” the librarian interrupted, blowing a puff of air from her lips. “Tell me what you were doing in this library.”

_ I was camping out after fleeing from a haunted hotel where I got a free room because a vampire was thirsty, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go because I’m six years in the past and I don’t have any property to my name as of this moment. _

Yeah, telling the truth probably wouldn’t do Mallory any favors in her current situation. At least, not the entire truth.

“Please,” Mallory begged, bending her neck back to look fully at the woman. (Why did everyone have to be so  _ tall _ , dammit?) “I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t have anywhere else to stay.” She hoped that would be enough. She hoped she wouldn’t be forced to go into minute detail. Mallory had always been a horrible liar. Had it not been for Cordelia’s identity spell, Langdon probably would have found her out within moments of his arrival at Outpost 3.

The librarian gave a little  _ hmph _ . “I am going to call the police!” the woman declared. “This is trespassing on public property!”

_ Son of a bitch. _

The librarian was turning away from Mallory, and almost instinctively, Mallory got to her feet, the only thought in her mind being that she could not allow this stranger to get the police involved, not when her crimes went far beyond a simple trespassing charge. “Please,” she pleaded, “you don’t need to do that.”

A trip to jail would be really inconvenient at this point in Mallory’s life. Especially since it would be kind of hard to change the future if she was behind bars.

The librarian scanned Mallory from top to bottom, and Mallory thought that maybe the woman would change her mind and decide to be lenient. Then, the librarian rolled her eyes and Mallory’s hopes plummeted, landing somewhere in her stomach with an uncomfortable splash. The librarian was turning towards the administrative desk again, where a landline phone ( _ who the fuck still uses a landline? _ ) was sitting in plain sight. Mallory held up a hand as if to stop the woman, panic coursing through her veins.

“Stop!” The word escaped her, and the librarian froze. At first, Mallory thought that maybe she had managed to get through to her, until she noticed the unnatural stiffness in her shoulders. The way the older woman didn’t move to say anything in return.

_ Had she just effectively used concilium for the first time? _

“You’re not going to call the police on me,” Mallory stated, the words tasting different on her tongue, but it wasn’t a  _ bad _ difference. It was almost like there was a certain power in those commands. “Okay?”

A moment of silence. And then, the librarian nodded.

Mallory exhaled. With a small amount of effort, she released the librarian from her control. The woman blinked once, seemingly delirious. Then, she turned to face Mallory.

“Well? What are you still doing here?”

* * *

The hospital corridor was noisy - sounds of beeping monitors, voices of both doctors, patients, and visitors, and the squeaking of an ungreased wheel sounded even louder in the enclosed space. The sounds could be heard all throughout the tiled hallway of the recovery wing, and as Mallory made her way past health and safety posters and closed doors behind which could be heard agonized moans, she tried to block out the sounds of human misery as she focused on her goal.

It had long been a moral question within the coven, usually brought up once a year by the newer witches. There had always been those who had wondered why they couldn’t use their powers to resurrect the dead or heal the critically wounded. Miss Cordelia’s ruling had always been a firm  _ no _ . The Supreme’s logic had been that just because they had abilities others didn’t, did not mean they had the right to play god. To decide who got to live and who would be left to die.

It was still hard, though, in places like this. Mallory knew that she could stop those pained moans with just a small amount of her power, and yet she didn’t. Because if she cured one person in one hospital, she would then be obligated to cure every person in every hospital. Thus lowering the rate at which people died, thus leading to overpopulation, thus leading to massive famine, thus leading to widespread starvation. All because of one witch who thought she was doing the right thing.

The only magic she was using today was a relatively basic spell Zoe Benson had once shown Mallory, that would allow her to go unnoticed as she made her way down the halls. That, and a not-so-basic spell to conjure up a bouquet of flowers to hide her face from the security cameras. She didn’t think that anyone reviewing the footage would notice her, but the events of the previous day had proven that it was always good to have a backup plan.

“Excuse me,” Mallory muttered as she brushed past a nurse, keeping her eyes cast downwards. She just had to avoid being noticed as she made her way through the hospital - and hopefully the spell would take care of that for her.

She went through the plan again in her head. Get into Michael Langdon’s room (according to the very nice receptionist, room fourteen in the recovery wing), and kill him. Put a pillow over his head until he suffocates. Use her magic to make his internal organs explode. It was the recovery wing, so no one would be surprised if he took a turn for the worst, even if the doctors had been optimistic about a full recovery.

The door to Langdon’s room had a small card on it with the number ‘14’, and below it a map to the nearest fire exit along with a poster reminding visitors to wash their hands. Mallory took a deep breath, preparing to enter the room. This time, she wouldn’t fail. This time, that little fucker would die, and he would stay that way.

“You can do this,” she whispered to herself, clenching her palms.  _ The human race is depending on you. _ And yet she couldn’t bring herself to step through that door. It was as if her feet had been glued to the tiled floor.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” said a voice from beside her, and Mallory jumped, turning to see a nurse watching her. In her nerves, Mallory must have accidentally dropped the spell that would have had her going unnoticed.

“Uh, yeah,” Mallory said, shifting her weight. Trying not to appear too guilty. Did this nurse know what she was planning to do? Was he here to stop her? “What can I do for you?”

The nurse nodded towards the door. “Are you here to see Michael Langdon?” he asked.

Mallory nodded. “Uh, yeah, you know. We’ve been friends since the second grade and all that.” The nurse was going to see right through the lie, and she knew it. He would call the police, and Mallory would have to figure out another way to get rid of Michael Langdon.

The nurse smiled brightly. “Well,” he said, “it’s good that he has a visitor.”

Mallory nodded again, fidgeting with the edge of her top. She really should have bought something that didn’t make her feel like her whole stomach was on display.  _ It’s good that he has a visitor _ , the nurse had said. There was something about that phrase that didn’t feel quite right.

“What do you mean?” she asked, eyes darting towards a nearby security camera, a little red light indicating that it was recording live. “Hasn’t his grandmother been to see him?”

The nurse shook his head. “Nope. You’re the only visitor he’s had so far.”

“Oh,” Mallory said, shuffling her feet. Why did something about that make her feel extremely guilty? It was Langdon, the Antichrist, so she shouldn’t have had anything to feel guilty about in regards to him, other than failing to kill him properly the first time around. But it was sort of sad, in a way, that his only visitor was here to kill him. His grandmother had been seemingly willing to let Mallory kill him with that car, but Mallory would have thought that the woman would have at least dropped off some flowers or a favorite book for Langdon.

“You’re a good friend for coming in to see him,” the nurse was saying. “A lot of people let their sick friends lay around in the hospital because they can’t deal with seeing them like that.”

_ Mallory was the exact opposite of someone Langdon could call a ‘good friend’. _ “Yeah,” she said, moving her bouquet to her other hand. Why was she so lost for words?

This was unnecessary, a distraction. The more time she left Michael Langdon alive for, the higher the chances became of that horrible future once again becoming a reality. She should not have been preoccupied over Langdon’s lack of visitors. And yet here she was.

“Well,” the nurse said, straightening his coat, “you two can call me if you need anything, okay?”

Mallory nodded. “Alright.” Hopefully the nurse wouldn’t be listening  _ too _ closely.

The nurse turned and made his way towards one of the elevators, turning and giving Mallory a little wave as he did. Mallory waved back with a false smile. She felt like she was about to throw up.

She took in a deep breath. Then another. Preparing herself for what she was about to do. Hiding that little bit of sympathy she felt for Michael Langdon away from her conscious mind, hopefully to never be thought of again. And she entered the room.

The space was mostly taken up by a hospital bed and a bunch of monitoring equipment. On the wall opposite the door, there was a window showing a view of the parking lot and the high-rise buildings beyond. The walls were covered in health reminders like washing hands or covering your nose when you sneezed, along with motivational posters all about having the courage to get better. But the real star of the room was the person sleeping in the hospital bed.

He looked different than the Michael Langdon Mallory had met at the Outpost. The lines of his face were softer, less defined, his light hair falling in boyish curls instead of the shoulder-length style Langdon had kept it in at the Outpost. Looking at him like this, Mallory could have been watching a stranger. He looked almost innocent in his slumber, like even now he wasn’t planning the apocalypse, or at the very least a murder or two.

Mallory set the bouquet down on the countertop, moving towards the bed. Her hand was already reaching for one of the pillows when a thought occurred to her. Langdon would have never been kind enough to murder any of them in their sleep, so why should Mallory extend that kindness to him? The piece of shit deserved a taste of his own cruel medicine.

She would wait for him to wake up. She wouldn’t wake him up herself, she would wait, so that way he would be fully aware of what was happening to him when she killed him. She stepped over to the window, leaning close to the glass, her breath leaving little spots of fog. From here, she could see tiny people wandering through the parking lot, some in wheelchairs, some with crutches, and some nervously clutching bags to their chest and looking petrified.

“Why did you try to kill me?” a voice asked from behind her, and Mallory nearly screamed as she whirled around to see Michael Langdon sitting up in the bed, staring right at her.

He must have been feigning his sleep.  _ Now is the moment. Now is when you kill him. _ But Mallory only stared, wide eyed, as she realized that she had no idea what she was going to do next.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> The chapter was uploaded to fanfiction.net and Archive Of Our Own, respectively, on September 25th, 2020. If see this anywhere other than those two sites, please contact me immediately.


	5. Method of Execution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mallory and Michael have an interesting encounter, and several disturbing things are brought to light.

"Why did you try to kill me?" a voice asked from behind her, and Mallory nearly screamed as she whirled around to see Michael Langdon sitting up in the bed, staring right at her.

He must have been feigning his sleep. _Now is the moment. Now is when you kill him._ But Mallory only stared, wide eyed, as she realized that she had no idea what she was going to do next.

"I heard you were doing well," Mallory blurted out, biting down on her lip. "You were recovering." She wished she could come up with a witty comeback like Madison would have, or could say the right words to soothe anyone's darkest inner demons like Miss Cordelia always could. Instead, she was left with an awkward disposition and no idea what the right words ever were.

Langdon stared at her for a moment, as if she were a complicated mathematical equation that he was trying to solve. "Are you going to try to kill me again?" he asked softly, and Mallory didn't miss the slight tremble in his voice, as much as she would have liked to. It would have made it easier if he had taunted her, if he had acted like he had at the Outpost. Like he was unbeatable. Not like someone she should be feeling sorry for.

Mallory gulped. She didn't know how to proceed from here. She wasn't sure how to deal with this person sitting in front of her. She was struck by how different he was from the person he would one day become. While the Langdon she had known in another life had been cold and manipulative, this one seemed almost childish. Innocent, if there ever was such a thing for somebody like Langdon.

"Yes," she answered.

Silence filled the room like a toxic gas. There was Mallory, who could never plan the words that came out of her mouth, who always spoke her mind and asked questions when she was curious. And there was Langdon, who right now may have seemed and acted like he was somewhat innocent, but who would grow up to become the exact definition of pure evil. And somehow, with all that in between them, neither of them could think of a word to say.

It begged the question, what did you exactly say in such a situation? That you were sorry, except you weren't? That it wasn't their fault they would become something so twisted, except that it actually was? How did you explain to someone that you were giving them the death penalty for crimes they hadn't committed yet? It was dark, and it was fucked up, but it was the reality that Mallory lived in, and she would not damn seven billion lives to annihilation just because she felt the smallest amounts of sympathy for one.

She _would not_ let her coven down.

"Is it because I killed those people?" Langdon's question breached the silence like a bullet through a window. He was fiddling with the hem of his blanket, looking down at his lap. Anywhere but at Mallory, it seemed.

"What people?" Mallory questioned, all thoughts of Langdon's current innocence flying out of the nearby window. "Who did you kill?"

She could see Langdon stiffen, seemingly shrinking in on himself. It could have been from a guilty conscience, feeling bad about taking human lives. Or it could have been that he was worried about someone in the hallway outside the room overhearing their conversation. Knowing what Langdon would become, it was probably the latter of the two.

"It was just a couple people," Langdon explained, voice quiet as his eyes flicked upwards to her. Mallory shivered as chills ran down her spine, at the idea that the number of people someone murdered could make it any less horrible, and she shot him the most venomous glare that she could conjure. "They were in my house, and I just wanted them to leave." Said like he was trying to justify why he punched someone in the face or said some mean words. Not like someone who was trying to justify the killing of another human being.

Mallory crossed her arms over her chest, death glare still turned Langdon's way. "That's no excuse for murder," she said coldly. Why hadn't she killed him yet? He had already taken at least two human lives, and if she didn't kill him soon, that number would only grow.

Langdon fidgeted, again glancing away from Mallory. Maybe she could get him talking and kill him mid-sentence, right when he would expect it the least. It sounded like something an epic hero in a book or movie would do, right? Except unlike any of those heroes, she would kill him slowly and painfully, like he would have done to her had their positions been reversed. So that he would not expect it, but would know exactly what was happening to him. It was no less than what he deserved.

"You really want to know why I tried to kill you?" Mallory started, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

Langdon didn't respond, instead staying stubbornly silent. Well, he hadn't said no. "Because," Mallory continued, "you're too dangerous to be left alive."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Langdon asked, finally looking at her again, eyes wide with either curiosity or fear. Or a talent for acting.

"It means…" Her mind wandered, to six years in his future or two days in her past, when there had been concrete evidence right in front of her that was every explanation that she needed to condone killing him. The day before yesterday had never before felt so far away.

She exhaled, the sound audible through the heavy silence. "Fuck," she muttered. She had fallen for the very thing that she had been trying to get Langdon to fall for; she had gotten distracted. She had gotten lost within herself, and if she hadn't realized that sooner, her mistake might have been a fatal one. She needed to keep her mind in the game. She needed to keep her focus on the task at hand, and nothing else aside from that.

"I shouldn't have to explain my reasons to you," she said. "You already know why I'm going to kill you." _Because you're the Antichrist. Because it is your_ destiny _to bring about the slaughter of humanity._

Michael had moved into a sitting position, and had moved his left leg over the edge of the bed, so his bare toes now gently brushed the tile floor. Mallory didn't miss the way his hand shook as he gripped onto the rail on the side of the bed. He shot her a quick glance before looking back down at his foot, licking his lips. His next words were nearly inaudible.

"Because I'm a monster?"

_What?_

_What the ever-loving_ fuck _did he just say?_

When Mallory had imagined a younger Michael Langdon, in the moments where there was nowhere better for her thoughts to wander to, she had always pictured a miniature version of the man she had briefly known and feared for much longer than that. Still with that silver tongue and that devilish nature. Still planning the massacre of seven billion people, even before his powers had fully developed.

She had never visualized someone with any semblance of a conscience. Someone who knew that the things he did were inherently bad, and realized what kind of person it made him for doing those things, again and again. She had heard the horror stories that Madison and Behold had brought back from the Murder House. About small animals and rodents with their necks snapped, or with their tiny throats slit, left as grotesque 'presents' for his grandmother to find. About a growth spurt that had him magically aging a decade overnight. About a babysitter who the grandmother had apparently found dead in Langdon's room. About a priest who had received the same fate.

She had never expected for Langdon to know that what he was doing qualified as evil. That it made him a monster. This person in front of her seemed farther away from the Langdon she had gotten to know than the distance between the Earth and Alpha Centauri. They could have been two different people, for how very different they were.

"I…" She trailed off. What exactly was someone supposed to say to a statement like that?

She felt bad for him, in a way. He was still the man who would grow up to murder her sister witches, but he had no way of knowing his own future. He had no way of knowing the kind of person that he would become in six years. Looking at him, she could imagine that maybe a part of him resented his dark destiny.

And maybe he deserved some mercy, for that if nothing else. Not the kind that would save his life. But maybe the kind that could at least give him a quick and painless death.

"How do you want to die?" she asked him before she lost her nerve. Or before she changed her mind.

Langdon had moved to sit on the very edge of the bed, showing the bandages wrapped all around his right leg. Mallory remembered the way he had been favoring that leg when he had failed to die the previous day, and realized that her first attempt at killing him must have broken it. She should have felt satisfied, that she had managed to cause some sort of substantial damage after all, even if it wasn't to the degree that she had been aiming for. But all she could feel was a twisting in her gut.

"What?" Langdon glanced up at her, this time holding her gaze instead of looking away.

"I'll let you choose," Mallory said, leaning back against the countertop behind her. "How do you want to die?"

Langdon hesitated, taking in a deep breath. She couldn't have been imagining the glimmer by his eye before he wiped it away. There had once been a time when Mallory had vowed that she would never harm another human being, and that part of her was screaming, even now, that she should not be doing this, that this was wrong, so very wrong. And the larger, much more logical part of her was arguing that leaving him alive would only make her the indirect killer of seven billion people. The compromise between the two was letting him choose. Giving him the option to die with a shred more of dignity than he would have had on that road.

"Can you do it at the house?" Langdon asked, voice almost unhearable over the beeping of the machines in the room. Mallory noticed that his lower lip was bleeding where he must have bit it, a trickle of blood running down his chin.

"The house?" she questioned, clenching her fingers.

"It's on the same road that…" Langdon trailed off, pausing for a beat. Steadying himself, the same way Mallory seemed to be constantly doing as of late. "It's on the road where it happened. Grandma says that it's where my parents died."

The Murder House. _Of course._ The one Cordelia had said Langdon had been born in, the one he would have grown up in until being adopted by a group of satanists. The one Madison and Behold would investigate after Langdon would complete the test of the Seven Wonders. A house filled with so many lost spirits who could never seem to find their way to the afterlife, cursed to wander those halls until a nuclear explosion would decimate the entirety of Los Angeles, and even then, they might still have been trapped there, limited by the property lines.

That was the place where Langdon wanted to die. The one where, odds were, he would most likely return as a ghost. And Mallory's disastrous night at the Hotel Cortez had proven that even the dead could still cause suffering and chaos. Even passed away, was Michael Langdon likely to stop killing? Would being a spirit without a body still prevent him from bringing about the apocalypse?

"I don't think that's going to be an option," she intoned. Langdon nodded, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. The room went silent again, and Mallory shifted on her feet, wondering if she should say something more. Somehow, any response that came to mind felt inadequate, as if she owed Langdon some sort of explanation. As if she owed him more than what she was already giving him.

Langdon moved his other hand to the rail, pushing himself onto his feet, wincing at the brief moment when he put his weight on his injured leg. A hand was moving to his side, where there was a visible lump under his hospital gown. (bandages?). For a moment the two simply stared at each other, like competitors sizing one other up in an arena.

And then he lunged towards her. His hands were outstretched, like he intended to wrap them around her neck. Mallory let out a shriek.

And she didn't think. It was almost an instinct, though she had never done anything like it before. But with a wave of her hand, Langdon was abruptly pushed backwards by an invisible force and pinned against the wall, bare feet dangling a foot above the floor. Struggling against his predicament. Like a butterfly on a corkboard.

"Fuck," Mallory swore. In a simple maneuver, she may have made a big mistake. One that could cost her everything.

She didn't know how early Langdon had developed his magical abilities - by the time her coven had encountered him, he had already been an incredibly powerful warlock with a large array of powers. But judging by her interactions with him so far, she ventured a guess that his powers had yet to establish themselves. If that was the case, then she could have just potentially introduced him to the magical world _years_ ahead of schedule. No good could possibly come from that.

Langdon was yelping as he continued to writhe against his invisible restraints. Loud enough to get the attention of someone from the hallway. With another hand gesture from Mallory, Langdon was dropping to the floor, crumpling against the tile with a whimper. Moving a hand to his leg.

Mallory took a small step back, dimly aware of the shaking in her hands. "Oh my god," she whispered. She had never used her magic like that before. She had never once used her powers for offensive purposes, unless you counted her use of _tempus infinitum_ , but the magic itself had never directly caused any harm. She didn't want to ever have to do something like that again. It left an uncomfortable amount of power at her fingertips. Power over somebody's _life_.

"Ow!" Langdon exclaimed as he forced himself into something resembling a sitting position, face screwed up in pain.

"Are you alright?" Mallory asked automatically, forgetting, for a moment, who it was that she was asking. She mentally cursed her principle politeness that had been drilled into her by her grandmother. Well, at least that was probably the most inconsequential failure of the last forty-eight hours.

God, when had her life become so _pathetic_?

Langdon didn't answer her at first, pressing his hand against the wall as he pushed himself to trembling legs. He flinched, again moving a hand to his side. He was in pain, Mallory realized, and judging by his grimace, it wasn't on the paper-cut level. That should have been good news for her. _She caused this pain he was feeling._ And if he could feel pain, it meant he could be killed, and he would stay that way.

But all she felt was the urge to throw up in the nearest garbage can.

"Why do you care?" Langdon spat out, leaning his weight against the railing. Still favoring his broken leg. She wondered, if he had managed to survive three critical impacts from a speeding car, how come he couldn't also heal his own wounds? Maybe it was tied to the magic thing - he didn't seem to have developed any other magical abilities at the moment, so perhaps he didn't yet have the capability necessary to heal himself.

 _Why do you care?_ "I don't," Mallory insisted. She cared about him enough to know that he needed to die, and that she hated him for what he would grow up to do, to the world and to her sister witches. She shouldn't have cared whether or not she injured him further - she should have been taking pleasure in such a thing, actually. He would have done the same.

Langdon glanced behind him at the wall; the poster that had been hanging there had been wrinkled something awful, and there was even a slight dent where her powers had slammed him against the surface. "How did you do that?" Langdon asked, glancing at the place where he had fallen. Mallory noticed a drop of red on the white tile, and quickly glanced away.

She had already done enough damage by showing him magic long before he was supposed to discover it. Or perhaps not. Was there really any harm in telling him about the full extent of the supernatural world when she wasn't planning on letting him live to see his next meal anyway?

"Magic," she answered simply, wincing automatically. What if his knowledge of magic somehow made him even harder to kill? What if, if he knew he had magic within him, he would have some way of defending himself against her. Well, surely he couldn't do _much_ damage after only his first learning of magic. It had taken some of the witches at the Academy _years_ to fully master their abilities. Hell, even Mallory hadn't exactly been the most talented witch during those first few months. There was no way that Langdon knowing about magic could change her odds in the slightest, right?

Langdon was staring at her, contemplating the information she had just given him. He reminded her of when she had volunteered to teach a religious class over the summer at her parents' church. The kids were elementary school age, and hadn't yet lost their sense of wonder when they looked at the world, or when they learned new things. Mallory remembered when they would all sit on the floor in a circle around her chair for story time, and their eyes would light up with wonder when she read from the Children's Bible, the one that had all the violence and the homophobia removed so that it would be okay for kids.

Mallory wasn't sure if she believed in God anymore, but even now she could still treasure that curiosity, that desperate desire to know everything. The kind that she was seeing in Langdon now, childlike despite the fear that still caused him to avoid her gaze for as long an interval as possible. "Where does it come from?" he asked, making a gesture with his hands, replicating the one that had smacked him into the wall. Like they were discussing the weather, or the state of the economy. Like they were having a casual conversation. Not one that would end with him dead and her having added a kill to her name.

If someone had told her even just a few days ago that a moment would come when she would one day sit in a hospital room and discuss magical theory with _Michael Langdon_ , she would have laughed, maybe cracked a joke about how the water must have been contaminated with nuclear radiation.

"I draw it from supernatural energies within my soul," she explained. "Every soul has those energies, some just have more than others. We call those individuals witches." And if a soul had a whole fucking lot of energy, they were labeled a Supreme, the queen of the both the witches and the warlocks. And if a soul had a shit ton more than that, then you had Mallory.

"Witches," Langdon muttered, as if saying the word aloud made it real for him. As if hearing the word spoken from his own mouth could turn it into a reality.

"That's on the table," she threw in, biting down on the inside of her cheek, "if you'd like. I can make it quick." She hoped he knew that she was referring to her powers. And she _could_ make it quick, quick and painless. Freeze the neurons in his brain. Drain his energy so rapidly that he fell asleep and never woke up.

Langdon had gripped onto the rail by the bed again, leaning against the mattress, lost in thought. There were times when Mallory had longed for the ability to read minds, to know exactly what thoughts were going through someone else's head. And there were times when she had felt lucky that she didn't have that ability. Right now, it was some sort of combination of the two. She wanted to know exactly what was going on in Michael Langdon's brain, but at the same time, she wondered if she should be grateful that she couldn't.

Life was complicated, sometimes. And sometimes, life wasn't even complicated anymore. Life made the definition of "complicated" look like a relaxing stroll on the beach.

Langdon took in another deep breath. "Can I-" His voice broke off in a hiccup, and he took another deep breath. "Can I see my grandma one last time?"

 _Grandma._ She knows who he is referring to, though she never learned the woman's name. The woman who had raised Langdon from birth. The woman who had watched and done nothing while Mallory had tried to kill her grandson. The women who, according to one of the nurses, at least, couldn't be bothered to even visit Langdon in the hospital. Mallory was surprised at the anger she felt on Langdon's behalf when his grandmother was brought up. She felt almost as if she needed to protect him from the older woman.

Which was ridiculous, of course. The last thing she should be doing was protecting Michael Langdon. But still, she felt an almost instinctual desire to keep Langdon as far away from his grandmother as humanly possible. That woman didn't deserve to have him cling to her as he took his dying breaths.

"I don't think that's going to be an option, either," she said hoarsely, hoping Langdon wouldn't be able to hear the apology in her voice.

Langdon glanced down at the floor, blinking rapidly. "Oh," he said, taking in yet another deep breath. Silence filled the room again, and Mallory tried not to appear too uncomfortable.

Mallory barely heard what was said next. It was Langdon, staring down at his feet, one bare with a bandage on the heel, the other covered entirely by more sophisticated bandages. "I don't want to die," he whispered, voice shaking.

Mallory shifted on her feet, suddenly feeling as though the weight of several grown men had just been dropped onto her shoulders with no warning. "Neither did I," she said, the words escaping her before she could properly think them through. Willing to offer him some comfort, because he was afraid and while she did intend to kill him, she could at least try to ease his fear. Just a little bit.

Langdon had sat down on the edge of the bed, and upon hearing what she said his neck made a sharp turn, and he made no effort to hide the surprise on his face. "What?"

Mallory took in her own deep breath. She had never talked about this with anyone else before - there had never really been any time. And the memories were still so brutally fresh, despite having been eclipsed over the last few hours by the urgency of removing Langdon from the timeline.

"It was a couple of days ago," she began slowly. "I…" How much should she reveal? What parts of this story were better left unsaid, at least to this particular individual? "I ate something nasty. A poisoned apple. You've seen _Snow White_ right?" Langdon nodded silently. "It was like that, but with more vomit. And I knew I was dying, and it hurt like a bitch. And there was nothing I could do about it. It's the worst feeling in the world."

Langdon was leaning forward, one hand still gripping the railing like it was a life preserver. "What happened next?"

Mallory glanced downwards, biting down on her tongue. "I died." Two little words that meant so much and did nothing to convey the enormity of the experience.

Langdon let out a puff of air, leaning sideways against the wall. "No," he said, moving the hand that wasn't gripping onto the railing to rest against his side, "I mean, where did you go?"

Mallory shrugged at his words, trying to keep herself from hyperventilating as the images flashed before her eyes again, like a movie almost. Mallory had stopped believing in Heaven and Hell when she had run away from home at a young age, but she had always believed that people had to go _somewhere_ when they passed away. "It was just darkness," she said softly, looking down at the floor. "It was peaceful, in a way. But also lonely. Empty." The memories were distorted, and sometimes they felt more like a weird dream or déjà vu than an actual ordeal that she had gone through. But maybe that was just how death was.

Langdon blinked at her. "How did you survive?" he asked, shifting his own position so that he could face Mallory easier. "You're not a ghost." And he would be able to tell, wouldn't he? He had grown up surrounded by more of the dead than the living.

Mallory nodded at that statement, remembering the feeling of a warm hand reaching for her through that darkness. She had reached for it blindly, and it had felt oddly familiar as it had wrapped around her own. And then, the feeling of breaking the surface of water, desperately gasping for air as she was met with a vision of three women in cloaks she could have sworn she knew from somewhere. And soon after, every question she had ever had about herself had been answered, every missing piece falling into place. "I was brought back to life," she said, choking on the words. And then shortly after, she had laid injured useless in a bathtub while the only people she had ever really considered a family died to protect her.

"With magic?" Langdon asked.

Mallory nodded again. "Yeah."

What was she doing here? She shouldn't have lost herself in those memories. It was foolish, and it had caused her to lose her guard. She should have killed Langdon the moment that she had first set foot in this room, no, the moment she had arrived in the past. Instead, here she was, making no move to harm him while talking _all about_ some of her worst moments. He needed to die, preferably within the next fifteen minutes so that she could get to New Orleans.

But she had told him that she would let him choose how he died. And she intended to honor that promise.

"Hove you decided yet?" she dared to question, hoping against all hope that he didn't try to kill her again, because if he did, she might end up having to take that choice away from him, promise or no.

Langdon shot her a look that could have been a glare if there wasn't so much fear behind it. "It's not so easy," he said faintly.

He made a valid point. Mallory was sure that, were she in his position, she could not have decided how she wanted to die during the course of only their conversation. And she understood. And she also understood how he might purposefully be taking his time in making his decision, in the hopes that someone might stop her, save him from death. But she also knew that the longer she stayed in this hospital, the higher the likelihood was that the police would consider her a potential suspect for Langdon's death. And the longer she took to kill Michael Langdon, the higher the likelihood was that the future that had the Earth destroyed by nuclear war would again come to pass.

"I would have thought you'd know more about murder," she tried lamely. "You know. Being you." _Being the Antichrist._

Langdon's brow had furrowed as he stared at her. "Do you mean the people I killed?" he asked slowly, fidgeting with his hospital gown.

Oh, God. _He doesn't know._ She had thought it would have been something he had always known, the kind of knowledge that you're quite sure where you learned, but definitely know that you've always acknowledged it. She had never imagined that there might have been a period in Langdon's life when he had had no idea about his own heritage.

Mallory bit down on the tip of her tongue. This conversation only seemed to be getting worse and worse as it continued. Of course, they hadn't exactly started out with a happy topic to begin with, but she could have never expected to be feeling as uncertain in this conversation as she was. Dammit, she was supposed to be the one in control here! She was supposed to be holding all the variables in the palm of her hand, but instead it felt like she was tiptoe-ing across a frozen lake, where every second there was a possibility that the thin ice would crack from under her and she would go plunging in.

"How did you kill them?" She needed to break the silence. So she tried. She asked a question. And she hoped that its answer would help get this conversation to the finish point, where Langdon was dead and she found herself a plane or a bus or a train to New Orleans.

Langdon shifted in his spot, throwing a glance towards the door that said everything he needed without making a sound. He was considering screaming for help. Mallory cursed herself for not thinking about it sooner. She waved a hand at the door. " _Non sonas forus._ " She turned to Langdon. "No one will overhear us unless I want them to."

Langdon seemed to almost shrink in on himself, and for a moment he simply sat there, as if he needed to physically muster up the courage to tell these stories. After a moment, he began speaking. "I would mostly just slit their throats," he said stiffly. "That's the fastest way to kill someone, I think. I don't know how I know to do that. They were hurting me and I didn't want them to and…" He trailed off, but he didn't need to explain any further. Mallory didn't want the gory details, anyway.

"You panicked," Mallory stated.

Langdon nodded. "Yeah."

She understood that, in a way, even if she still considered the act of murder morally wrong, to be reserved only as a last resort. She understood the panic, the uncertainty, the feeling of primal impulses taking control. She didn't approve of it, but she understood it.

"I've never killed anyone before," Mallory said suddenly, feeling brave. "What's it like?"

Langdon shrugged, but Mallory noticed the tension in his shoulders. The way he seemed to almost want to disappear so maybe he wouldn't have to answer this question. "It feels good," he said, eyes darting towards the ceiling before going back to Mallory, "at first. And then not so good. I used to leave my grandma these presents, dead animals. I thought that she liked them. She never told me to stop. Until yesterday." He went silent, seemingly lost in a memory of his own.

Mallory was honestly surprised at what he had just told her, and that he had done it with such raw honesty, too. She had known about the animal murders. And she had known that the stress of raising the literal Antichrist had eventually driven Langdon's grandmother to suicide. But she had never thought that the grandmother was the type to do nothing when she found dead animals (or dead people, for that matter) in her home. Just clean up the mess and not bother with telling him to stop.

Maybe he deserved a second chance at life. There was obviously still some light in him, and maybe, just maybe, she still had a chance to steer him towards a future that didn't involve him being responsible for oh-so-much death. She felt ashamed of the thought almost immediately. The fate of her coven hung in the balance, and here she was contemplating letting their future murderer walk freely just because he made her feel a little sympathetic.

"Grandma says my dad died by gunshots," Langdon said quietly, pulling Mallory from her thoughts. "Can you do that?"

Mallory blinked before his question fully settled in. She didn't have a gun with her. But perhaps she could imitate the force of a bullet with a small object and her telekinetic abilities. She nodded, imagining a ticking clock in her mind. Counting down to when she would make her first, and hopefully last, kill. "Yeah," she said. "I think I can do that."

There was a rattling sound from behind her. Mallory jumped, spinning around. _The doorknob._ Somebody was coming in. Somebody was about to catch her, right in the act of her second attempt at killing the same person in the past forty-eight hours.

_She couldn't allow herself to get caught._

It was split-second instinct to transmutate from the room. Had she stayed longer, she probably could have come up with a cover story, if Langdon hadn't messed her up. Instead, like a coward, she took the easy way out, and vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drinking game idea - take a shot every time there's a moment of silence in this chapter.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction Net, respectively, on October 11th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than those two websites, please contact me immediately.


	6. 2015

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael receives some devastating news, and Mallory finds a place to sleep for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to God, this chapter is cursed. I rewrote it three times. I deleted a minor storyline and had to write it again. But, I think I'm satisfied with the end result.

A year ago, before the “growth spurt”, Constance had sat Michael down on the couch beside her and had pulled out a hefty book with the marks of having been looked through a great many times. She had been in a good mood that day, and she told Michael that she was going to show him something very special. The book was filled with photographs, and Constance told him who each person in every picture was. There were his great-grandparents, dead before he was born, along with his great-great aunt Mimi. There was his aunt, Adelaide, also dead. There was his other aunt, Rose, who Constance didn’t say much about except that she was deceased as well. In the pictures, she was always a little girl. There were never any pictures of Rose Langdon as an adult.

Constance didn’t spend much time on the picture of Hugo Langdon, Michael’s grandfather. All she said was that that man had gotten what he deserved, for betraying their family.

And then, there was a picture of a blond-haired boy staring out at the ocean, his eyes somewhere far away. He probably hadn’t been aware that his picture was being taken. Constance had run her fingers along the boy’s image, for a moment silent as a memory overtook her.

The boy’s name was Tate, Constance had said. And he was Michael’s father.

Michael had asked how he had died. It had been a logical question. Everyone else in that book had passed away, was dead and gone. As far as Michael knew, he and Constance were the only living members of the Langdon family.

Constance had said, wiping her eyes before tears could ruin her makeup, that he had been shot. Multiple times. Gunshot wounds. Also before Michael was born.

That had been years ago. Michael hadn’t seen that photo album since.

Now, Michael sat in a white-toned hospital room, ready to join the people in that photo album. Maybe Constance would put a picture of him in there. Even if she had been mad at him before.

“My grandma says my dad died by gunshots,” Michael said quietly, and the witch-woman turned to stare at him. “Can you do that?”

The woman hesitated a moment, eyes darting around the room. And then, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I think I can do that.”

And then, there was a rattling noise, and both turned to the source of the sound. It was the door to the room. Someone was trying to get it open. Michael felt a leap of hope. He was going to be saved! He wouldn’t die today after all.

The door was opened, and one of the nurses entered the room, shooting Michael a smile. The man had introduced himself earlier, but Michael couldn’t remember his name. He thought it might have started with an “r”. The nurse smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. It was the kind of smile his grandmother would give him when she was tired or sad or drunk but still wanted him to think that she was happy. “Hey,” the nurse said, “you’re awake. How are you feeling?” Another person had followed the nurse into the room, a woman wearing a baggy blue uniform with a silver badge on her chest. A police officer.

Michael glanced behind the two, but his would-be killer had vanished. Perhaps she had used her powers to become invisible? The policewoman saw where he was looking and turned around, sticking her hand in the very place where the witch had been standing only moments before. Nothing happened. Had the witch left somehow?

“Are you alright, Michael?” the nurse asked, and Michael’s eyes flicked to the older man.

Now was the moment. A small handful of words, and Michael could have a guarantee that there would be people who would protect him from the murderous witch. A small handful of words, and he would not die today, or tomorrow, or any day in the near future.

But a tiny voice in his mind told him to wait. To keep the knowledge of his attempted killer a secret, at least for the moment. If he told someone about her, he would have to tell them about any way she could potentially do harm to him. And that included her inexplicable magical abilities. They would think he was crazy. They might lock him away, call him a madman.  _ You don’t want that, do you? _ the voice whispered, and Michael had to agree with it. He didn’t want to be locked away. It sounded terribly boring.

“I’m fine,” Michael lied.

The nurse nodded at that statement, before moving to stand in the corner across from the window. The policewoman pulled over a chair from the opposite side of the room and set it beside Michael’s bed before sitting down, offering him a tight smile.

“Hi, Michael,” the woman began, drumming her fingertips against the arm of the chair. “I’m Officer Hall. Do you think you’re feeling well enough to talk with me for a little?”

Michael tensed, wincing at a sharp pain in his side. He didn’t want to talk to Officer Hall (Constance didn’t trust the police, and she had passed that paranoia on to her grandson), but if she went away, the witch might come back and continue with her plan to murder him. And so, Michael nodded. “Okay…”

The policewoman turned around in her chair and shot a look towards the nurse, who gave a small nod. She turned back towards Michael then, offering him another one of those not-so-real smiles. “You live with a foster parent, right?” she asked. “Constance Langdon?” Michael was confused for a moment, before he remembered the rule Constance had explained to him once. When they were out in public, she was his foster mother, not his grandmother. And that rule also applied when strange people came around asking questions.

Michael nodded again.

“Do you have any other family members?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t think so.” He glanced down at his lap, picking at the thin coverlet. “I mean, I might.”

Officer Hall’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

Michael resisted the urge to shrink inwards on himself, instead taking in a steadying breath. Constance rarely got angry at him, but when she did, it made him want to hide himself away under his bed or in the hallway closet and never come out again. The same, it seemed, was true for uncomfortable conversations. “I don’t know a lot about my mother,” Michael explained, “except that she died giving birth to me. She might have had other family members. And my father’s dead.”

The policewoman nodded, eyes flicking towards something behind Michael. Maybe just trying to avoid his gaze. “Do you have any family friends?” she questioned. “Anyone who you could stay with?”

_ Who was this woman? _

And more importantly, why was she asking him these questions? Why was it so important, whether or not he had any other family members? Did this have something to do with the people he had killed? He knew that more often than not, when someone killed another person, the police locked them away. Sometimes even killed them, if they had done something considerably horrible.

“Why are you asking me these things?” he responded.

Officer Hall folded her hands over her legs. Michael noticed a gold band on her right-hand ring finger. “Can you answer the questions for me, please, Michael?” Still not giving  _ him _ any answers, and yet expecting that he would give her some. “I promise I’ll explain once I have all of the information.”

Michael stared at her, considering. He was tempted to cross his arms and refuse until he got some answers for himself, but he resisted that urge. Instead, he nodded, leaning his head back against the wall behind the bed. “There aren’t a lot of family friends,” he said slowly, eyes darting towards Officer Hall’s face, “not that I know, anyway.” Constance had her own friends. Michael had never gotten to meet them. He had barely even left the house before -

“No friends from school?” the officer queried.

Michael shrugged again, adjusting the fit of his hospital gown. He felt so naked in the paper-like fabric, as if he was laid bare for the whole world to see. “I used to go to preschool, but Constance pulled me out after -”

_ After I grew up too fast. I missed ten years of my life. I missed almost all of my childhood. _

But he couldn’t say any of that out loud, now could he?

His grandmother had made him promise, when her words were slurred from drinking too much whiskey, that he would never tell anyone that he wasn’t supposed to be the age he appeared to be. Normal people didn’t grow up overnight. Michael was not a  _ normal person _ , and he doubted that Constance would ever think of him that way, especially after the things she had screamed at him when she had told him to leave and never come back.

She had drilled into him that if anyone that wasn’t her asked him, he was a teenage boy. He was born in the early two-thousands. He was part of Generation Z. All of those were lies of course, but necessary ones, Constance had said. To keep him away from those who would want to study him and lock him away and cut him open so they could see how the insides of him worked.

They were the first truly significant lies that he would tell, not lies like  _ no I didn’t stay up late last night, grandma, _ or  _ yes of course I behaved well in preschool today _ . They were the first lies that really  _ mattered _ . And they wouldn’t be his last.

Officer Hall was leaning forwards in her chair, the way Michael did when something interesting happened on the television. Perhaps that was all the world thought of him as. Entertainment. “After what?” she asked, and Michael realized that he must have zoned out for a moment.

“Why are you asking me these questions?” Michael asked again, this time looking her in the eye. Officer Hall maintained the eye contact for just a little more than a second, before looking away.

“Michael -” she started, but he cut her off.

“Tell me why you’re here!” he demanded. There was a rattling, and the cabinet doors across the room swung open, making both Officer Hall and the nurse jump. Michael didn’t notice.

Officer Hall blew a puff of air through her lips while the nurse went over to close the cabinets (muttering under his breath about “damn rats” and “hope I don’t have to tell my boss about this”). The policewoman’s hands were gripping the arms of her chair  _ very _ tightly. “Your doctor expressed worry that your foster mom hadn’t been to visit you yet,” the policewoman started, “seeing as she  _ was _ your legal guardian.”

_ She was your legal guardian.  _ There were times when Michael wished she wasn’t. If only he could have been born to a normal mother and father, like the ones he saw on the television. His mother would have sung him lullabies at night when he couldn’t get to sleep, and his father would have taught him about things like sports and swear words. And he could have even had a sibling, an older sister or brother. Or quite possibly even a younger one, though he preferred the idea of an older one.

But at the same time, would a normal family have been able to handle everything that was wrong with him for as long as Constance had? A normal family would have probably had him sent to jail, or even had him committed to a mental institution just from the dead animals, nevermind when he got to real people. Would a normal family be able to deal with having a son who aged a decade in his sleep?

“We got in an argument,” Michael thought aloud, remembering how Constance’s throat had felt under his fingers, remembering the little voice in his mind that had whispered at him to  _ do it, it will feel so fucking good. _ “And she kicked me out. I don’t think she wants to see me.” He had lain in his hospital bed for hours, staring at a white ceiling with a bright, circular light in the center, waiting for Constance to come and see him, and at the same time hoping that she wouldn’t. And when the door had finally opened without the telltale chatter that all the nurses and doctors in this place brought, Michael had feigned sleep, hoping to get an idea of her mood. And it hadn’t even been Constance. It had been his would-be murderer, come back for more.

The only person who had come to visit him. Well, at least she had left flowers on the bedside table.

“What was the argument about?” Officer Hall questioned, scooting her chair the smallest increment closer to Michael’s bed. Like maybe if she kept the interested movements to a minimum, he wouldn’t notice. She was wrong. He noticed.

Michael stiffened, glancing away. “It doesn’t matter.” A beat. “She always comes around, anyways.” She always had before. And they had argued before, but never like this. Constance had always apologized and called him her little angel again by the time she tucked him into bed. At least, she had. She hadn’t been to tuck him in since the growth spurt.

Officer Hall sighed, twisting her fingers together in her lap. “Michael,” she began, “I’m about to give you some very bad news. Can you try and stay calm? We don’t want you to tear your stitching.” The stitches they had had to put on the various deep cuts he had received - a few on his legs, a few on his arms, one particularly nasty one on his forehead.

Michael contemplated the policewoman. “What’s the news?”

Officer Hall paused for a beat before she began speaking. “Like I said, we sent someone to check on your foster mother because there had been no word from her since your accident -”  _ Not so much of an accident _ , Michael thought. “- other than the agreement to pay your hospital bills. When our patrolman got there, no one would answer the door, so he let himself in.”

Michael subconsciously scooted closer to the woman, gripping his hands into fists. “That was rude. He shouldn’t have done that.” He didn’t like the idea of strangers being in his house, even more so when they didn’t have permission. It always felt like they were invading his personal space. Coming into his home, telling him what to do and what not to do in ways that Constance never had.

“We just wanted to make sure that your foster mother was alright, Michael,” Officer Hall tried to explain. Michael didn’t say anything in response. He wished that his grandmother could have been in the room with him. She would have given this police officer a good talking to about respecting private property and illegal searches without a warrant.

Officer Hall, oblivious to Michael’s rising frustration, continued with her explanation. “She wasn’t in the house. Our officer was just about to call the station when he noticed a note saying that she had gone next door.” Michael nodded at this. Constance spent a lot of time at the house next door. She had even taken Michael there at one point, told him about some of the souls that resided there, and what happened to people who died in that place.

“We checked up with all your neighbors,” Officer Hall said, and Michael mentally cringed. “But she wasn’t there. She had gone to the abandoned house next door to yours.”

“I knew that,” Michael said quietly. The policewoman gave him an odd look.

“How?” she asked. Michael wished she would just stop asking questions. Stop sticking her nose into things that weren’t any of her business.

“She goes over there a lot,” Michael replied, not doing anything to keep the venom from his voice. He expected that the policewoman might question him on that further, since she seemed so determined to discover anything and everything about him and his family. But she only nodded in response to his statement.

“Michael,” Officer Hall began gently, resting one of her hands on his mattress, “when our officer went into that house, he found your foster mom in the office area. She had…” The woman stopped talking, inhaling than exhaling, as if she needed to prepare to say something she would rather not. “She overdosed on pills. And as of now, we think it was a suicide.”

What?

_ What? _   


Michael’s first reaction was that Officer Hall must have been joking. She had to be. His grandmother wasn’t dead, she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. Constance Langdon would never kill herself. She had too much pride to do that kind of thing. Officer Hall had to have been lying. Or perhaps playing some cruel prank. But it wasn’t real, it just wasn’t. There was no way that his grandmother was dead.

_ But it makes sense _ , that familiar, terrible voice whispered in his mind.  _ She said that she never wanted to see you again. She refused to help you when you were no longer able to stand, after that witch ran off and you collapsed in the street and she went back into the house, probably for a tall glass of whiskey. _ Michael felt his breaths coming in short, desperate bursts.  _ Wouldn’t killing herself be the ultimate guarantee that she would never have to lay eyes on you again? _

No. No no no no. She had died in the Murder House. She would come back as a ghost. He could go over next door and still see her, just as she was when she was alive, only a little less solid, a little less human. But he knew, realistically, that that was unlikely to ever happen. If she had wanted him to come and see her in her afterlife, she would have visited him at the hospital before killing herself. She would have let him in on her plan. She never said a thing to him, but her message was clear. She never wanted to speak with her grandson ever again.

Michael was dimly aware of the death grip he had on the bed sheets. Of the hot tears running down his cheeks. And then, there was the sound of glass cracking, and that brought him back to himself as the sound faded.

“Michael?” Officer Hall was saying, having leaned closer to him, resting one of her hands on his uninjured leg. “Michael, can you hear me?”

Michael turned his head to stare at her. And there was that anger that always came in like a hurricane. And he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t even intend to do it, but one moment he was simply staring at the policewoman, and the next, his hands were wrapped around her throat.

Squeezing tighter. Tighter. Officer Hall was choking, clawing at his fingers with her nails, but he didn’t release his grip. He had never choked someone to death before, well, not a human anyways. He wondered if it would be any different than when he did it to small animals.

In his preoccupation, he didn’t notice the nurse sneaking up behind him until a syringe was jabbed into his neck, an unfamiliar liquid injected into his veins.

In his surprise, Michael released Officer Hall, who gasped for air. He whirled to face the nurse, who was holding an empty syringe and wearing a guilty expression. “What was that?” he asked, as the world began to spin around him, and the nurse took a small step backwards.

The nurse shifted on his feet. “Just something that will knock you out for a few hours, Michael.”

“No,” Michael said, bracing his hand against the wall beside him, “You’re trying to kill me. Like… she was.”

Those were the last words he managed to get out before the hospital room faded out completely, and he collapsed against the pillow behind him.

  


* * *

  


The sun was now low in the sky, so the high-rise buildings of downtown Los Angeles blocked what little light was left in the sky, casting monstrous shadows on the streets and sidewalks and boutique and restaurants. Some photographers would have called it a muse. Others, a travesty.

Mallory couldn’t have cared less about the way the world looked. Her eyes were on the pavement below her as she shuffled her feet. The street beside her was alive and glowing with late-night rush hour traffic, but Mallory was in another world, the sounds a lights fading away as she replayed the days’ events through her mind.

She was a failure. She had failed her coven, who had risked everything on the  _ chance _ that Mallory would be able to change the past. She had failed the world, by being incapable of eliminating the Antichrist. And she had failed herself - her powers weren’t good enough, her every plan seemed to go the shit. It was almost like there was some divine power trying to stop her from killing Langdon.

And she almost felt guilty over  _ Langdon. _ Fucking  _ Langdon _ . Over how scared he had been in that hospital room. Over how all he seemingly wanted, if he had to die, was to be able to be with his family when he did it. It left her feeling sick to her stomach. She was supposed to be the hero, and Michael Langdon the villain. It was that simple. Except it wasn’t. How was she supposed to label him a villain, when he was yet to become that person? How was she supposed to feel that burning hatred she had felt when she stared him down in the Outpost, memories restored?

She gasped as she nearly fell forwards. Glancing down, she saw a loose chunk of sidewalk protruding from the walkway. She kicked at the loose chunk with the toe of her boot. “Ow!” The loose area hadn’t moved, but she was pretty sure that some of the bones in her toes had. It must have been more firmly in there than she had thought.

She stared down at the chunk of sidewalk. It was a fucking sidewalk. Fucking  _ sidewalk _ . She bet that when a nuclear bomb dropped on this city, this fucking chunk of broken sidewalk was still there. Just just being a fucking broken chunk of sidewalk. She suddenly let out a scream, feeling a burst of energy surging through her veins. The chunk of sidewalk went flying into a nearby alleyway, shattering against a concrete wall.

Mallory gasped, feeling a wave of exhaustion overtake her. She glanced at the spot where the bit of sidewalk had been, now just dirt. She glanced around at the pedestrians, at the people sitting in their cars in the nearby traffic, but no one seemed to have noticed her. She breathed a sigh of relief, continuing away from the spot of concrete.

What did anything matter, really? She couldn’t kill Langdon, despite all of her efforts, something always stopped her. So maybe she should focus her efforts on something else. Concentrate on fortifying the coven’s defences, so that when the Armageddon came, at least all of the witches could survive it this time around. Spend her remaining five years before the end of the world seeing the world and making friends and falling in love. Forget about the apocalypse and just…  _ live _ .

It was tempting, like the fruit in the Garden of Eden.

And she knew she would never be able to live with herself if she allowed seven billion people to die just because saving them was harder than she had anticipated.

She glanced around at herself. She had lived in Los Angeles for two years before the bombs hit. Back then, she didn’t know who, or what she was, other than the personal assistant of Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt. She didn’t know that the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders.

She stared at the cars passing by. Plenty of them were yellow taxis, with a healthy mix of family vehicles thrown into the chaos, and maybe one or two egotistical morons in fancy convertibles. All going to places they thought were significant. And those places were significant, but how did you measure significance when there was so much of it?

Mallory noticed one car breaking from the ranks - an older-looking turquoise model that probably required a lot of maintenance to still be operational. The vehicle pulled up to the side of the road next to Mallory, and the window was rolled down with what looked like a hand crank.  _ A hand crank. _

A dark-skinned woman poked her head outside the window. “Are you alright?”

Mallory hesitated, scanning the strange woman. With a small amount of effort, she reached out with her magic and felt for the woman’s energy. Her thoughts, her mentality. She couldn’t see it like Bubbles McGee might have been able to, but she could see something different. She could see the woman’s timestream. There was pain, so much of it. But Mallory could sense no good intentions here, in a late October evening in 2015.

Mallory put her hands in her pockets, offering the stranger a small smile. “I think I’m lost,” she admitted, though saying she was lost implied that she knew where she was going.

The stranger smiled, but it wasn’t the threatening kind. “You need a ride somewhere?” she asked, nodding beside her, to the front seat of the car.

Mallory considered this. She had always been warned about the dangers of hitchhiking (the “nice person” giving you a ride could be a serial killer!), but she still sensed nothing hostile coming from this woman. And she would feel safer in a car than she would out on the street, alone, where anything could happen.

“You’re not going to kidnap me, right?” she half-joked, leaning forwards to meet the stranger's eyes.

She expected a chuckle. Instead, the woman’s eyes flashed downwards momentarily, and Mallory briefly got a sense of emotion she had been all-too-familiar with these past few days. Guilt. And then it was gone, and the woman made eye contact with Mallory again. “No,” she said, a grade of seriousness in her voice, “no, I wouldn’t do that.”

Mallory nodded, deciding not to ask. Whatever demons haunting this stranger’s past, they were none of her business as long as they didn’t threaten Mallory’s life. She had to walk into the street and in front of the hood to get to the passenger side, and she hugged her body against the car to avoid the passing cars as she climbed in.

“Nice ride,” she commented. (Yes, there was a hand crank.)

“Thanks,” the stranger said, starting the engine, which purred to life with surprising grace, especially for a car of its apparent age. The car moved forwards into traffic, and the woman focused on the traffic for a moment before turning to Mallory. “I’m Donna.”

“Mallory,” Mallory responded lightly.

The car smelled nice, like a library full of old books. There weren’t many personal effects, apart from a small brightly-colored collection of scrunchies around the stick shift that looked as though they had never been worn. Donna kept her eyes on traffic for a moment as the two women sat in silence, both lost in their own thoughts.

“Where are you headed?” Donna asked finally.

_ Where are you headed? _ Mallory would like to know the answer to that herself.  _ Where are you headed? _ She didn’t want to say a hotel, because she didn’t have enough cash left over from her shopping excursion for that, and the only hotel that might let her stay without cost was currently on her  _ never-enter-again _ list. And it would probably be considered impolite to ask this woman she had just met to let Mallory stay at her own house. If only there was an abandoned building somewhere she could camp out, somewhere she could be sure be sure no one else would bother her -

And then it hit her. And she wished she had thought of it before, instead of camping out in that death trap called the Hotel Cortez. It was an abandoned building that no one would  _ dream _ of turning into some sort of hangout spot, because its real estate agency still took care of it, even if, to Mallory’s knowledge, it hadn’t been occupied in years.

“1120, Westchester Place,” Mallory said slowly, half expecting Donna to automatically question. The Murder House wasn’t exactly a toursit attraction, like the supposedly haunted locations in New Orleans that thousands of people flocked to every day. But it was still well-known, at least among the supernatural community (mainly for its impressive ghost population, a disturbing fraction of which was homicidal). She didn't know how well it might be known among Los Angeles locals.

But Donna only said, “You got it,” and continued driving. Mallory gave a sigh of relief, before Donna added, “That wouldn’t be the Murder House, would it?”

Mallory shifted in her seat, glancing out the window at a sign advertising the latest film from such-and-such director. “Yeah,” she replied, fidgeting with a loose thread in her jeans, “it would be.” She paused. Then, “You know about the house?”

“I live nearby,” Donna explained with a small chuckle.

Mallory began to pull out the thread from her jeans. “Ah.”

Donna took a turn at a corner. There was a man in an ice cream costume waiting to cross, and the large cartoonish eyes seemed to be boring into Mallory’s soul. She glanced away.

“You don’t live there, do you?” Donna asked after a moment. Mallory bit your lip.

“I -”

“I won’t report you,” Donna reassured, smiling again, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Mallory exhaled, leaning backwards in her seat. But something about that statement was bothering her. Last she checked, the older generations didn’t take very well to the younger generations camping out on property that they hadn’t bought and paid mortgage for. She sat up in her seat. “Why?”

Donna sighed, and there was that guilt again, backed by gripping sorrow. “Let’s just say that I’ve had my fair share of tough situations.”

Mallory nodded, unsure of what else to say. The rest of the car ride passed in silence, with Mallory watching the pedestrians and shops, and then houses go by while Donna focused on the road. But it was a comfortable sort of silence, one that let both women lose themselves in their own thoughts. It felt like almost no time at all had passed when Donna pulled up in front of the Murder House.

Mallory stared up at the house, windows dark. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Donna responded. Mallory reached for the handle, pushing open her door. She paused, glancing back at Donna. “I think I might have done something I shouldn’t have.” The words were barely louder than a whisper, and yet it felt as though the whole street could hear them.

Donna leaned against the steering wheel, scrutinizing Mallory. “What did you do?”

“I -” Mallory started, before hesitating. “I was angry,” she tried again, “and I -”  _ I don’t have any dark places what a fucking lie that turned out to be.  _ “- I didn’t think to try things a different way. Should I have?”

Donna didn’t answer right away, considering Mallory’s question. Or maybe she was just thinking about whether or not she should report her to the police. “I once knew a girl like you,” Donna said finally. “The world took so much from her, and all she wanted to do was take a little from it.”

“What did she do?” Mallory asked.

Donna breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. Like some sort of thing they always tell you to do in meditation classes. “She sought out revenge,” Donna began, “at first. And she hurt some people along the way. But… she wasn’t like them, not really. She was happier helping than she was hurting.”

Mallory nodded, turning around and stepping out of the car. The heat had faded with the sunshine, and the world was now at a comfortable lukewarm temperature. She was about to close her door when Donna leaned forwards.

“Stay safe out there,” Donna warned.

_ Stay safe out there. _ What a strange thing to stay.

“You too,” Mallory replied, slamming her door. A moment later, the car sped off, and Mallory watched it until it turned the corner. She then turned to face the Murder House’s looming figure, forlorn in the otherwise bright street (save for the house next door, which was equally as dark - Mallory really didn’t want to think about why that was). She took a step towards the house, praying that this wouldn’t be another Hotel Cortez incident. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's Michael's POV. Hope y'all enjoyed, because it was really hard to write, given that 2015 Michael has about five minutes of screen time and I wanted him to be in character.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to ao3 and Fanfiction.Net, respectively, on October 25th, 2020. If see this anywhere other than those two places, please contact me immediately.


	7. Wake Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael attempts to hide away at an old family home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, um..
> 
> my dumb ass forgets to forgets to release this chapter on its set date. thank you arkham459serpent for reminding me.
> 
> also, i just realized that this fic is going to be a lot longer than i originally thought. like i was originally planning for maybe twenty chapters, but it’s going to have to be way longer than that. we’re talking AT LEAST thirty chapters, probably more. both michael and mallory are in a place mentally right now where they aren’t ready to be romantically involved - heck, they don’t even have the best mental health in general right now, mallory has a lot of trauma and buried issues with her parents to deal with, and michael’s got all sorts of nasty stuff we aren't ready to dive into.
> 
> so my point i, we're gonna be in for the long run here. it may be years before this fic is completed. if you're not down for that, fine, don't read it. but i promise i am going to make an effort to see this fic through to its completion. this is a fic that i love, and i want to make sure i get these guys right.

The first thing Michael saw when he opened his eyes was white. He shut them tight again, grimacing, moving his hand up to rub at them. Except his hand wouldn't move. He felt his breaths quicken as the world seemed to close in on him. This time, he only had to blink against the onslaught of light as he glanced downwards towards his hands.

His wrists were being held down by a pair of black straps, and no matter how much he struggled, they wouldn't yield. Attempting to move his legs brought much of the same results. "Ah!" he yelped as the edge of the strap dug into the soft skin at his wrist. He tried harder to pull his arm from the restraints, groaning at the effort. There was a searing pain in his left arm, and he nearly let out a yelp. Glancing downwards, he saw that he must have reopened his stitches, and a steady river of blood was now dripping onto the wet blankets.

He relaxed against the mattress, staring at the white ceiling. The world seemed to spin around him. "Fuck," he muttered.

This would be the time when the killer witch would make another appearance. The killer witch, who knew his name even though he didn't know hers. The killer witch, who was so afraid of being caught, that at the first sign that there was even a _chance_ that her actions might not go undiscovered, she would choose flight over fight.

 _The killer witch… the killer_ witch. The witch with magic. The witch who explained that everyone had that magical core, but only few had the capacity to draw power from it. The kind of power that could slam someone against a wall with a single thought. The kind of power that allowed people to move things without even laying the smallest finger on them.

Michael let his eyes slide shut as he took in a deep breath. Then another one. He didn't know where to find that so-called core, but he thought it had to be somewhere around his stomach, so he concentrated on that area. And he imagined the restraints coming undone, popping off as easily as it was to twist an animal's small neck in his hands.

Nothing happened.

Michael shut his eyes tighter, remembering how it had felt when the witch had forced him against the wall with her own powers. Remembering the feel of static electricity that had crackled around her just before it happened. Michael tried to recreate that feeling, like getting shocked on a power outlet. Electricity, in the air. In him.

He exhaled.

There was a ripping sound, and a moment later, the sensation of freedom in his right hand. Then his left one. Then both his legs. He held his right arm up to his face, staring in wonder at the small marks the strap had left. He brought up his left arm, and immediately flinched when he again caught sight of the blood still flowing from his reopened cut. "Ow," he winced.

With a groan, he pushed himself into a sitting position, letting his feet dangle over the edge of the bed, his right leg heavy with all the bandages still wrapped around it. He held up his left arm to further examine it. Blood oozed from the cut, dripping onto the thin blue fabric of his hospital gown, and even getting a few sticky droplets on his leg.

"Uh…" He glanced around, looking for something to stop the bleeding. If he knew anything, it is which parts of the human body bled out the fastest, and the arm, while not at the top, was definitely high on that list. "Uh…"

He pressed his opposite hand over the cut, biting down on his lip. With his left hand, he managed to rip the white blanket off of the bed and out from under him, though it did take a little tricky maneuvering. Carefully, so as not to remove any more stitches, he wrapped the thin blanket around his arm several times, until red stopped leaking through, at which point he used the remaining bits of blanket to tie a hasty knot. Surveying his handiwork, he deemed it adequate, at least enough to keep him from bleeding out.

With a deep breath, he attempted to push himself to his feet, and immediately, he fell back down onto the mattress, nearly letting out a small yelp at the pain that shocked through his broken leg. He closed his eyes, wiping at the edges before any tears could escape. For a moment he simply sat there, on the bed, willing the pain to fade away like a distant memory.

Reopening his eyes, he noticed a pair of crutches on the opposite side of the room, only a handful of steps away from where he was sitting. They must have been left there before they had given him the sleeping shot, and he just hadn't noticed them until now. By leaning his weight against the bedside table (which still had the flowers that the witch had brought with her on it), he managed to half limp, half _hop_ his way to the other end of the room, where he slid the crutches under his shoulders, relieved to be able to move more easily. As a side thought, he grabbed a white doctor's coat from a hook in one of the cabinets, pulling it over the hospital gown to hide the blood stains and the open back.

He was just adjusting the sleeves of his coat when the door opened, and the same nurse from before entered the room, shutting the door behind him. The older man was humming some pop-tune to himself, but he stopped dead when she saw Michael, standing, and for a moment, the two simply stared at one another, neither quite sure what how to react to this.

"Aren't you supposed to be restrained?" the nurse wondered aloud, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and the spell broke.

Michael felt his muscles tense up, and he gripped the handles of his crutches hard, contemplating a quick getaway. The nurse glanced behind Michael, and his eyes widened when he saw the restraints on the bed, undone, and stained red.

"Oh, shit," the nurse muttered, taking a small step towards Michael, hand held out as if he were consoling a wounded animal. "Look," the nurse began, in a soft voice, "I know you're upset, but please understand that the restraints were necessary." It sounded like an excuse to Michael's ears, and he decided right then and there that he wasn't going to kneel to such a thing.

"You tried to kill me," Michael spat out, moving a tiny centimeter away from the nurse, who only sighed, as if he had heard all this before, and he knew how it was going to end.

"We aren't trying to kill you, Michael," the nurse stated, taking yet another step closer into Michael's personal space. "We're trying to help you."

Michael shook his head. "No," he breathed, voice unsteady, "you let her in." The witch. The woman who wanted him dead because she saw exactly what his grandmother did - a monster. Someone who had stolen the life of a seemingly innocent, golden child, nevermind that most of his murders had been committed before he grew up overnight.

The nurse was staring quizzically at Michael, head tilted to one side. "Let who in, Michael?"

Michael inhaled deeply, reminding himself that he held the power in this situation, unlike how it had been before, with the witch. Michael had killed people, and he knew how to do it, despite never being properly taught about it. And, as had been shown with the restraints, he could move things with his mind, at least a little bit. Michael would wager every drop of his grandmother's expensive whiskey that this nurse didn't even know such a thing - telekinesis - was possible.

"The witch," Michael whispered, shifting ever-so-slightly. "The one who was…" _Trying to kill me. Driving the car that hit me_ four times _. Sneaking in here to finish her job. ...Letting him choose how he wanted to die._

"Who are you talking about, Michael?" the nurse asked, brow furrowed.

For a long moment, Michael simply stared at the nurse. He remembered a strange substance entering his body, and the world going black. He thought he was dying. But he wasn't. Otherwise, he wouldn't have woken up again (unless he was in hell now). They would have had plenty of opportunities to kill him while he must have been lying vulnerable, either asleep or unconscious. And yet they hadn't. He was still alive, as far as he knew.

 _Ah, but they haven't tried to save you either_.

Hadn't they, though? They had fixed him up after that car had hit him, stitched up all his cuts and put bandages on the leg that had been bent a way it shouldn't have been.

 _But they let the witch in. She almost_ killed you _, Michael, and she would have if she hadn't been interrupted by that police officer at the literal last moment._

Michael watched the nurse. And then, he lunged forwards in one sudden movement, his crutches falling to the floor with a noisy clatter as Michael pinned the nurse against the wall behind the man, all pain in his leg forgotten in the adrenaline of the moment. Michael was breathing heavily, audibly, _loudly_. The nurse's fingernails were prying against Michael's steady grip as the man gasped for air, but Michael didn't relent.

"Michael - please -" the nurse gasped.

"You let her in," Michael half-shouted, squeezing tighter. Tighter.

"Don't kill me -" the nurse pleaded, eyes rolling upwards. And Michael gasped, taking a step away from the nurse, who crumpled to the floor, motionless.

" _I don't want to die."_

" _Neither did I."_

Michael stared down at the nurse, blood boiling in his veins. Hands shaking at his sides. Teeth clenched. And then he collapsed to the ground, hissing as the pain in his right leg came flowing back to him. "Fuck!" he swore, digging his nails into his palms, fighting back tears.

There wasn't enough oxygen in the room. He gasped, but his lungs weren't filling, and dimly, he realized that his efforts to hold back the tears had failed. He bent his head over, staring at the tiled floor and his bare foot, marked with the stitches the doctors had said might leave scars. He closed his eyes, shaking his head. Fighting the thoughts - the memories - running rampant through his mind.

" _It's time to turn off the television, Michael," his nanny said with that false cheer._

Kill her.

" _Begone, foul spirit," the robed man declared as pain burned beneath Michael's skin._

Kill him.

Michael choked on a sob. He never wanted to hurt anyone. It was just… always easier to kill them, then to tell them to go away. _Do you have to kill every living thing that crosses your path?_ Violence was always easier than playing by the rules that the rest of the world had determined should be followed. Always better to feel that rush of power that always came when he took a life, rather than deal with whatever someone else wanted him to do. And he loved that rush of power like an addict loved their drug of choice.

And he wondered if the witch would have felt the same thing when she killed him.

Eventually, the oxygen levels in the room went down to normal, and Michael could go without choking on wet gasps. For a moment he simply stared blankly, noticing a small crack in the tile one the floor. They really ought to seal that up - someone could trip and hurt themselves.

Michael dragged himself over to the nurse's side, resting his hand against the older man's chest. He breathed a sigh of relief when a steady _thump-thump_ pounding against his palm.

Michael pushed himself away from the nurse's prone form, grabbing onto his crutches, discarded in his moment of blind recklessness. He managed to get to his feet (well, foot) by leaning against the bedside table, taking a little longer than he normally would to ensure that he wouldn't slip and fall down again. He was lucky that no one had overheard anything in the room from the hallway, but he still didn't want to make too much noise.

He propelled himself over to the door, opening it about a foot to check the hallway. It seemed mostly empty, except - Michael pulled the door down to a crack at the sight of two women talking by the front desk.

"How are you doing?" the first woman, who Michael recognized as the receptionist, asked.

"Alright," said the second woman, who was leaning against the desk and had a purse on her shoulder, which seemed out of place with the pale-blue staff uniform. "Anything interesting happen here today?"

"Hmm…" The receptionist trailed off, and Michael imagined her playfully tapping her chin with her finger. "Some kid attacked someone."

"Dang," the second woman swore, leaning forwards over the desk. "What happened?"

For a moment, the conversation halted, like they tend to do just before someone shares a particularly juicy bit of gossip. At least, that's what always happened on the television - Michael himself had never been involved in any type of gossip-related shenanigans.

"He's right here," the receptionist was saying, "in the recovery wing. I heard he totally flipped out and tried to _kill_ someone." Michael winced at that, glancing behind him at the nurse's still-unconscious body. It was a good thing that he had only been trying. A very good thing indeed.

"Heck," the second woman muttered, before saying, louder, "Sedated, I hope?"

"Oh, yeah," the receptionist confirmed, "they gave him all the good stuff." Michael would definitely not define the liquid that had put him to sleep as 'good stuff'. "His nurse just went to check on him, actually." Michael bit his lip, feeling yet another surge of guilt. And anxiety - he wondered, how long would it be before someone noticed that the nurse was missing?

The second woman gave a small chuckle. "Well, hope he doesn't cause any trouble for me tonight." The night shift! That's who the second woman must have been. The blinds on the window were closed, but Michael had to bet that it was probably evening. Oh, this was perfect! As far as Michael was aware, the only members of the night shift he had interacted with were the staff member who brought him a glass of water the previous night, and the janitor who had come in to mop the floor of his room while Michael was feigning sleep.

He could get out of here, and (hopefully) no one would recognize him as the person that was in restraints just a few minutes earlier.

There was the screeching sound of a chair being pushed backwards, the clack of shoes against the floor as someone stood up. "Yeah," the receptionist said, "hope the night shift goes well." Confirming Michael's suspicions.

Michael waited a minute to make sure that the daytime receptionist had left, before daring to push the door open once more. Seeing no familiar faces in the hallway, apart from the smiling ones in all the obnoxiously cheerful posters, he opened the door fully, leaving the room and picking a direction at random.

"Excuse me?" said a semi-familiar voice from behind him. "Where are you going?"

Michael turned around, a tricky maneuver with the crutches, and found himself staring at the night-shift receptionist, who seemed to be a lot shorter from this angle. "Uh…" Where was he going? He doubted that this woman would take very well to him saying outright that he was leaving the building. "...Bathroom…"

To Michael's relief, the night shift receptionist simply nodded, and Michael let out a sigh. He turned around again, taking a right hand turn at a hallway intersection.

"Wait!" the nighttime receptionist exclaimed from behind him, and Michael froze, turning himself at a forty-five degree angle, waiting for the woman to say that he should still be tied to his bed, that he obviously needed a stronger dose of whatever the hell they had given him.

"Yeah?"

The woman smiled, nodding to the left corridor. "The restroom is the other way."

Michael managed a small grin, nodding at that. "Okay." He again turned around, this time moving to his left. And sure enough, there was the sign for the mens' restroom. Michael had only used a public restroom enough times to count with only one hand, and he had no intention of changing that. Instead, he leaned against the wall for a moment and caught his breath.

It was ten that he noticed his reflection in a small mirror, visible through the part way-open door to the ladies' room. He looked like shit. Maybe it was the dark circles under his eyes (present despite the drug-induced nap he had just woken from), the tangled mess that was his hair, and the only _just_ visible spots of red on his hospital gown. He frowned, and his reflection did the same. He decided that mirrors were terrible inventions unless one was looking particularly nice, and he glanced away.

After he was sufficiently rested, which didn't take very long, all things considered, he again started moving down the hallway, keeping an eye out for a glowing red exit sign. He nearly dropped his crutches when an alarm suddenly began to blare through the echo-y halls. "Alert!" screeched the loudspeaker as Michael flinched, "High risk patient currently on the loose in recovery wing! Approach with caution!" The message ended abruptly, leaving everyone in the hospital waiting - for something, anything, to happen.

"Shit," Michael muttered.

He glanced behind him. People talking. People running around. People that would probably spot him within moments. He glanced in front of him. More people talking. More people running around. And yes, more people most likely spot him in a couple of moments. Considering his surroundings, his eyes fell on a door labeled 'storage closet'. Wasting no time, he ducked inside, backing up against the wall.

It was as though his very breaths were the loudest possible thing on this Earth. People could probably hear him from the other side of the building. He held his breath. Released how uncomfortable that was, and let it out again, quieter this time. He watched the shadows move back and forth across the small stretch of light visible under the door. And then, one shadow stopped, and the door opened.

"Is anyone in here?" asked a gruff male voice, and Michael, blinking, recognized the janitor who had cleaned his room the previous night. The man sighed when he saw Michael, briefly closing his eyes (probably thinking about all of the retirement benefits he would get when he was old enough). "There you are," he said. "Look, kid, you should be in bed -"

So casual. Like an exasperated parent dealing with an unruly child.

Michael jabbed his crutch into the man's stomach, causing him to double over in pain. The janitor stumbled backwards, knocking into passing by with a cart. Michael let out a small gasp, feeling his lungs contract in on themselves. He wanted to go home. No - home wasn't home anymore, because his grandmother, his grandma, she wasn't there. No, he wanted to go to the house, the one where everyone else was -

It felt a little like being sucked through a small tube as Michael's vision went black for the second time in twenty-four hours.

* * *

_It was 2014, a year previously. Michael was still a small child, and Constance still looked at him with love in her eyes. Currently, Constance was shoving Michael's feet into a pair of small shoes._

" _What's so special about next door?" Michael whined. "It's not a house."_

_Constance sighed. "No, Michael," she explained yet again, "it's not just a house. That's where our family is, remember?"_

_Michael pulled his foot away, preventing his grandmother from shoving it into the cage-like shoe. "But they're dead." He knew the rest of their family was dead, because Constance had told him herself. "Shouldn't they be in - in -" He paused. To Constance's endless dismay, he could never pronounce that word properly, despite having seemingly no other speech impediments. "The up high place?" he said instead._

_Constance rested her head in one hand, using the other to again grab Michael's foot. "No, honey. They died in the house, so their spirits still live there, even if their bodies are dead."_

_Michael considered this. His teacher at preschool never talked about anything like that, and she knew about a lot of things that Michael had no idea about. Like whales. But if his grandmother said that something was true, then it usually was. A thought struck him then, and his face brightened. "Are mom and dad there?"_

_Constance actually stopped her battle to get Michael's foot in the shoe, staring at Michael. "What?"_

_Michael shrank in on himself, wishing briefly that he had never said that out loud. Constance rarely talked about Michael's father, and never about Michael's mother. "The other kids," he explained, glancing down at the striped socks on his feet. "At school. They - they have a mom and dad. And I was just -"_

" _Yes Michael," Constance interrupted, "your parents are in that house."_

_Michael brightened, glancing up at his grandmother with a hopeful expression._

" _But they're the last people you want to see," Constance said, an edge of coldness now in her voice as she finally managed to get Michael's in the shoe. "Unfit to raise a child, if you ask me." She grabbed Michael's other foot, ignoring Michael's attempts to squirm away. "Your mother -" Constance sighed, "- her own daughter was dead for_ weeks _and she didn't even notice. And as for your father - well, he was never the type to raise children."_

_Michael stopped moving long enough for Constance to get his other foot in the shoe. "Then who are we going to see there?" he asked._

_Constance gave Michael one of those smiles that actually felt_ real _. "Your Aunt Rose, sweetie. And maybe your Uncle Beauregard, if he's feelin' up to it."_

* * *

Michael fell face-first into hard pavement, groaning at a pain blossoming in his nose. He lay still as blood dripped down onto the concrete, world spinning around him. His leg was still screaming in pain. He had landed on top of his crutch, and it dug into his stomach. He was keenly aware of the mosquitos biting at his exposed skin. But he ignored it in order to simply lay on the sidewalk and pretend that the world didn't exist for a moment.

And that's when it hit him, much as the sidewalk had. _The sidewalk! The fucking sidewalk!_ There were no sidewalks in the hospital (that he knew of - he hadn't yet gotten the opportunity to explore the building), which meant that he probably _wasn't_ in the hospital. He lifted his head from the pavement, glancing around at his familiar surroundings. Adults out for walks. A teenage girl walking a gaggle of dogs. And - his house. Well, his and Constance's. Just as he had seen it last. A thriving rose garden. A gorgeous lawn. A porch that managed to be simultaneously welcoming and terrifying.

"How…?"

It was then that he realized that he was still lying on the sidewalk.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, grabbing his discarded crutches and somehow managed to get himself standing up. He pretended not to see the curious stares of passerby, for the unfamiliar teenager with a bloody nose and crutches, wearing a hospital gown and a doctor's coat stained with even more blood, a bed sheet wrapped around his arm and coming undone. All in all, he looked like a mess, but the socialites that lived in this part of Los Angeles were masters of minding their own business, so no one tried to approach him.

And there it was. The house he had grown up next door to, but had only visited a handful of times. The infamous Murder House. Those who died there stayed there. It was where his whole family was. He propelled himself through the front gate, which must have been opened by a gust of wind. A light flickered on in the building. One of the ghosts? Constance?

The front door opened easily when Michael pushed on the door, and he entered the house, inhaling the scent of old wood and old sorrow. "Hello?" he called out into the silence.

He ducked his head into the living area, wrinkling his nose at the dust covering all the furniture. "Any ghosts around?" he asked, hoping for a response. He didn't want to be alone in this large house.

"Who's there?" a vaguely-familiar voice called out from another room. Distinctly feminine. Michael turned towards the source.

"I've been here before," he said, remembering previous trips to the house. His Aunt Rose, stuck forever in child form (she got to be a child too much. He didn't get to be a child enough). The only relative that Michael had met besides Constance.

There was a pause from the other speaker. "Are you a ghost?" Michael ventured, leaning against the wooden doorframe. There was a sound from the nearby foyer, of heels clacking against the floor.

The other speaker let out a small chuckle. "Depends on your definition, I guess -" And she froze as she came into Michael's view.

_It was her. The witch. The one who tried to kill him._

"Michael," she said coldly, all previous warmth having evaporated.

Michael stared at her. She had tried to kill him. She pretended it was mercy, by letting him choose, as if that wasn't its own form of cruelty. And now she was here, in the place that should have been _his_. It was _his_ family that had died here, not hers. She had no right to this place!

"What are you doing here?" Michael asked softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was uploaded to ao3 and Fanfiction.Net on November 11th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than those two sites, please contact me immediately.


	8. Hello Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Mallory meet for the second time - and maybe, actually, accomplish something.

Mallory flipped through the pages of a dusty psychology textbook, scanning the words but not truly grasping them. Only a short phrase or word here and there would jump out at her. _Mind. Guilt. Sociopathic tendencies._ Every sound in the house put her on edge. The creaking of old wood and pipes. The whispers that she knew belonged to the poor souls that were trapped in this house. She tried to ignore it, telling herself that if any of the lost spirits were interested in communicating with her, they would make sure she knew about it. But she was fine. She was content to simply relax and be relatively quiet and _exist_.

She couldn't remember the last time she had been like this. When she had simply allowed herself to exist in a space without owing it anything. In the hospital, visiting Langdon, she had owed it a corpse she had never delivered. In the Hotel Cortez, she had owed it her fear and quite possibly her life. And in the Outpost, she had owed it her servitude. Even at the Academy, before everything went to (literal) Hell in a handbasket, she had owed it a trip through time. It was ...relieving, to say the least. She owed this house nothing except her existence within it.

She was startled from her thoughts by the sound of the front door slamming, the supports of the house rattling in response. She automatically tensed up as her eyes around the small office area.

"Hello?" she called out, pushing herself to her feet, holding her book in a death grip.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. And then, someone shouted, "Any ghosts around?" Mallory could have sworn that she recognized that voice from somewhere. She wondered if this could be another "friend of the house", like Billie Dean Howard, the psychic who had greeted Madison and Behold upon their arrival to the Murder House.

"Who's there?" Mallory asked, voice echoing through the mostly-empty house. Quietly, she set her book down on the office's couch, moving towards the front foyer. Ready to telekinetically incapacitate the intruder in a heartbeat if they seemed to be a threat.

"I've been here before," the other person stated, and Mallory's brow furrowed. "Are you a ghost?" the stranger asked.

Mallory stepped into the front foyer, seeing an odd shadow standing in the doorway to the living area. She thought about ghosts - lost spirits, unable to move on. Wasn't that what she was? The only difference between her and the beings that haunted this house was that her heart was still beating. She forced a chuckle. "Depends on your definition, I guess -"

She froze as the exact features of the intruder came into focus. He was leaning on a pair of hospital-grade crutches, and he had pulled a doctor's coat over his hospital gown, both of which were covered in a combination of dried and new blood, probably from his obviously-broken nose. There was also a bed sheet wrapped around his arm, and that too was beginning to soak through with blood. He wasn't wearing shoes either, but she was yet to see this "version" of him _ever_ wearing shoes. Or even socks.

"Michael," she said coldly. He stared at her, seemingly curling in on himself.

"What are you doing here?" he asked softly.

She swore that she was not going to be the first to break eye contact. She needed to remain in control, she told herself. If she could only remain in control, good things would happen for the universe. Fate had just given her a third chance to kill Michael Langdon before he would bring about the end of the world and her coven, and this was a chance that she was determined not to waste.

And then Langdon sniffed, breaking the quasi-dramatic silence, pressing the sleeve of his jacket up against his still-bleeding nose. Mallory's brows furrowed. "What happened to your nose?"

Langdon shifted, making a small movement away from her. "Why?" he asked, voice slightly altered. "Looking for weaknesses?"

Mallory shifted her weight. She wished she could have been that cunning. Instead, she just cared about people, even those she wasn't technically supposed to.

Langdon hesitated. And then, he blurted out, "I can move things with my mind."

Mallory felt her breath catch in her throat. She had done it already. She may have managed to cause irreparable damage to the timeline by introducing him to magic - and his own exceptional abilities - _years_ before he would have in the original timesteam. This could have untold consequences.

But did she care, really? Did it even matter? She was so tired, had been thinking of almost nothing but murder for _three days_ , and the only thing she had gotten from it was failure. Maybe it was time to try a different strategy.

Or maybe she just needed to take a nap or eat some food.

Either way, she sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. "So can I," she replied, knowing that if it came down to a fight between them, she would still win. She had more experience in the magical arena than he did. She was older than he was, no matter how you decided to measure their respective ages.

"Why aren't you in the hospital, Langdon?" she questioned.

Langdon bit his lip. "How do you know my name?"

Mallory stared at him.

Langdon hesitated. "You know my name," he said quietly. "I don't know yours."

She supposed she hadn't ever thought about that. In the Outpost, Langdon had known everyone's names - and seemingly all of their darkest secrets. She supposed it did seem like she was a little like that from this version's perspective.

And that delved into a whole other realm of fucked up things that she didn't particularly want to think about. Ever.

She inhaled through her nose, forcing her mind to stay away from that topic. "My name is Mallory," she clarified. Because it didn't really matter at this point, whether or not he knew her name.

"Mallory…" Langdon muttered aloud, before mouthing the word silently to himself. Mallory felt something inside her contract at the sound of her name on his lips. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to threaten him to never, _ever_ say it again or else, or if she wanted to beg him to scream it at the top of his lungs. She settled for the third option - maintaining her dignity by pretending it didn't both her.

"Why aren't you in the hospital?" Mallory asked again, clenching her hand into a fist and unclenching it. Langdon glanced away from her.

"Because you tried to kill me," Langdon answered quietly, but not quietly enough for Mallory to miss the shot of bitterness in his voice.

She felt a pang of - something. Like a combination of car sickness and that dizzy feeling you get after stepping off of a roller coaster. She uncrossed her arms, letting them dangle at her sides. "It was nothing personal," she confessed, "believe me."

Langdon peeked down at his feet. "That makes it worse," he whispered, almost too inaudible for Mallory to hear.

Mallory contemplated him. This boy, who was so much more than what he would someday become. There was something important she was trying to remember, or maybe it was a riddle she was trying to answer. The solution was right there on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't know what it was. It was trying to claw its way free, but it didn't know that she was supposed to know about its existence. It was like being under the identity spell again, except distinctly Different, with a capital "D" for "don't know how to explain _why_ exactly it's different".

"I'm sorry." It was the only thing she could think to say..

Michael glared at her. "No," he said slowly, "you're not."

"Yes, I am!" Mallory insisted, louder this time. She didn't know why this mattered, only that it did. Immensely.

"What are you doing here?" Langdon demanded suddenly. Mallory froze, caught off guard by the sudden change in topics.

"This house belongs to my family," Langdon growled, moving ever-so-slightly towards her. "I think you should leave."

Mallory sighed. She could still kill him, right now. But the idea of such a thing was beginning to grow old. She told herself that the revulsion she felt at the idea was because it had failed already so many times. She told herself that it was because she needed a new angle at the situation. At the idea of changing history. And that's when a memory came to her.

_The Countess nodded. "Well, it's sound. Get close to them. Figure out their weaknesses. Figure out what makes them cry." The woman began tapping her fingers on the counter, the jewelry making it sound like a blade being dragged across a wall. "And when the time is right, show no mercy."_

Get close to them - him. She could do that. She could say she was genuinely sorry. She could pretend to be a guilty soul looking to repent for her sins, to gain some semblance of forgiveness. And Langdon would open up to her, oh yes he would. She'd know how to kill him in no time. She'd know how to make him _bleed_ , as the Countess might say. It was a foolproof plan, apart from how the idea of killing him still made her feel like she was coming down with something.

But she could address that complication later.

Mallory relaxed her posture, hoping to appear less threatening. "I'm not going to leave," she said. Langdon opened his mouth to reply, but Mallory interrupted him. "But I'm not going to kill you, Langdon." He closed his mouth, watching her with wide eyes. Neither making a move, both either too afraid to break the silence, or too afraid of what words might come out of their mouths. It was so quiet you could hear the whispers of the spirits drifting through the place.

It was Langdon who eventually spoke first. "Why?" he asked softly, the word piercing the veil of silence like a razor blade.

Mallory bit her lip. "Because I don't want to know what that feels like." It was only half a lie. _Because every time I try to kill you, something prevents me from doing it._

Langdon actually took a sudden step backwards at that, wincing as he put weight on his injured leg. "What?" Eyes wide as they remained locked on her, probably suspecting her of lying in order to attempt to lure him into a false sense of security.

"You win, Langdon," Mallory spat out, rolling her eyes. "Finally, there's something you can do that I cannot." She had matched him, wonder for wonder, if not in an official test. She had even proved to be stronger than him, sending herself backwards through time where ( _when_ ) he could not.

Langdon didn't say anything for a moment. Finally, he asked, "Why do you keep calling me that?"

Mallory's brow furrowed. "What?"

"Langdon," he said with a pointed glare.

She supposed it was for a host of reasons. Habit, mostly, from how everyone had referred to him at the Outpost, even if the witches had always called him Michael. She supposed it was easier, in a way, to think of him in terms that suggested an unfamiliar relationship. Referring to him by his first made what she was planning to do all-too-real.

Instead of voicing any of these thoughts aloud, however, she just shrugged. "It's just what I think of you as."

Langdon glanced at the wooden floor, seeming to almost shrink in on himself. "Please don't," he said, and Mallory noticed a tremble in his voice. It piqued her interest, to say the least.

She cocked her head to the side, brushing a stand of hair behind her ear. "Why?" She remembered the Langdon she had known at the Outpost - she hadn't known what his first name was until Mr. Gallant had mentioned spotting it on the man's identification card, and even then, she hadn't really thought of it very much at the time.

He shrugged. "Langdon is my grandmother." He licked his lip, fidgeting with his fingers. "And my father. And - and all the other relatives I've never even met."

Mallory only stared at him. She herself had stopped going by her own last name, but that was because of entirely different reasons. Her parents had been the ones to tie her to her bed when they let the exorcist into their home. They had been the ones who locked her in her bedroom and forced her to escape through her window on a stormy night, either hitchhiking or walking all the way from her small town in Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana. There was a reason that she wanted to distance herself from those people when she decided to no longer consider her surname as part of her name.

But she couldn't understand why _Langdon_ , of all people, would want to distance himself from that.

He was still trying to explain his reasons to her. "You know," he exclaimed, "I just found out that grandma died! And it's -" He froze, seemingly deflating as she looked on. "- it's all my fault," he sobbed, shaking as he pressed himself against the wall behind him. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he trembled, gasping.

Mallory found herself at a loss. It was natural for her to want to comfort anyone she saw in distress, but she wondered if she shouldn't this time around. And she immediately crushed those dark thoughts, because going down that rabbit hole was how people ended up in a mental institution. She convinced herself it was right for her to back up against her own wall and do nothing but contemplate the person standing before her. She did nothing to help. She simply watched.

Until something occurred to her.

"You -" She paused, unsure of how to voice her question. "You feel bad about it?"

Langdon stared at her, mouth agape. "She -" He stammed. "She was all I had…"

Mallory glanced down at her feet, noticing blankly that the toe of her left boot was beginning to wear away. "I…" She stopped talking. What was she even meant to say to this? She didn't know. She _really_ didn't know. And she didn't like it. It made her feel as if she were balancing on a ledge - you fall too far one way, and you're plummeting towards the ground, so fast that the impact will break every bone in your body.

She reminded herself to breathe deep as the two stared at one another. And then, Langdon's face hardened, and Mallory noticed him clenching his grip on his crutches. "If you won't leave here," he said coldly, "then I will." And he was turning towards the front door, and all Mallory knew was that she could not set him loose on the world to kill more people and stumble upon Satanic cults that would have him on the warpath two years earlier.

"Wait!" Mallory shouted. "Don't go!" Hand outstretched towards him like she was some tragic Juliet in one of the romance movies Coco had always adored.

Langdon turned around, surveying her expectantly, and it was then that Mallory realized she had no idea how she was going to convince him to stay. Short of leaving herself, she could think of no other thing that might change his mind about finding somewhere else to stay. "I…" What was she even meant to _say_?

And then, an idea formed in her head, like an angel appearing to a poor, lost soul.

Mallory raised her left hand, focusing on the energies wrapped all around the house. And then, she twisted it, and a knife from the kitchen across the house flew into her open palm, barely avoiding giving her a nasty cut. Langdon flinched backwards, but she only brought the knife to the palm of her right hand, making a semi-deep cut in the soft flesh. " _Promissum_ ," she muttered, the words echoing strangely through the wooden house. " _Et non nocuerent. Non occides. Pax._ "

Langdon was watching her with what seemed to be a sort of morbid curiosity, head tilted to the side as he contemplated the blood running down her hand and to her fingers.

"I promise you," Mallory said shakily, "Michael Langdon, that as long as we share the space under this roof, I will make no attempts on your life." _I never said I wouldn't kill you in the backyard._

It felt as though time had decided to tick by extra slowly. Langdon gaped at her, eyes wide, as if he had just seen a ghost (actually, seeing a ghost would have likely been _less_ surprising to him, given where they were standing). And Mallory was just standing there, hand still outstretched, knife still clenched in the other, a Greek sculpture, forever frozen in place.

And then, Langdon held out his own hand - the one with the blood-soaked bed sheet tied to it - and the knife flew to him. Mallory stiffened ( _was she about to regret the oath she had just made?_ ), until Langdon pressed the blade against his own hand. "I won't promise that I won't try to kill you, Mallory," he said, eyes flicking downwards, "But…" He sighed. "If you don't hurt me, I won't hurt you."

Mallory neglected to mention that the binding magics wouldn't work without the Latin incantation. He believed the magic would work, and that was sufficient enough.

"Thank you," Mallory whispered into the silence. And then, quiet enough that only she could hear, "Michael." Saying his first name without the surname or any semblance of bitterness felt wrong in her mouth. Wrong, but not unpleasant, although she'd never admit that.

Her eyes darted around the foyer, searching for something to focus on that wasn't the blade still clenched in Michael's grasp, or both of their blood probably staining it. The house really did have an elegance to it, and it reminded her strongly of the Hotel Cortez. That too, had appeared beautiful in an old-fashioned, art nouveau, chick hipster hotspot way. She wondered if every haunted location was like that - tempting, stylish, and undeniably fatal.

Speaking of fatal…

Eventually, her eyes had to be drawn back to Michael. He had set down the knife on a decorative table, and he too was trying to find anywhere to look that wasn't at her. She noticed that the bed sheet wrapped around his arm still seemed to be seeping through with blood, and remembered an anatomy lesson in the ninth grade about major arteries. She wouldn't have to do him any harm, but judging on how unprofessionally that sheet was wrapped, he would bleed out within a few hours anyways.

"Come here," she said, and Michael's eyes snapped the hers.

"Why?"

Mallory managed a small smile - her first in what felt like ages. "I want to show you something."

Michael made his way towards Mallory slowly, until they were standing only two feet apart. The last time they had been this close, Mallory reflected, they had been six years in the future, neither quite able to realise the significance of the other's existence on the planet Earth. She still remembered how smooth his fingers had felt as they caressed her cheek, just as she remembered the tears that had been streaming down her face, the voice inside her mind screaming that something was wrong.

In 2015, Mallory grabbed Michael's hand, and he went still as she pulled it up to examine the sheet tied around it. Carefully, she undid the sloppy knot, wincing at the bloody wound that ran all the way from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. There were some signs of stitches, but they seemed to have been pulled out.

"Have you been feeling light headed?" she asked Michael. He gave a single nod, biting his lip.

She exhaled steadily. And then, she held her right hand over the cut, eyes fluttering shut as she felt around for the right timestream. She found it, the one flowing around the wound and the blood leaving it. And then, she forced it to flow backwards.

She imagined Michael was probably watching this happen with a mixture of fascination and curiosity. Mallory didn't see any of it with her eyes closed, but she heard Michael give a small gasp as the wound sealed itself shut, even the stitches gone from the sight of injury. She opened her eyes, hand falling to her side as she leaned against the wall behind her, breathing heavily.

Michael was staring at his now-healed arm. "Fucking hell," he swore. He brought a finger on his other hand to the spot, running it along where the wound had once been. He glanced up at Mallory. "How?"

Mallory's breathing began to slow as she thought about the couch just in the next room. "It was never there," she muttered.

"What do you mean?" Michael asked, and for the first time, there wasn't any fear in his voice when he addressed her.

Mallory stood up, placing her hand over his, guiding both of their hands until they were hovering in front of Michael's broken nose. "I know you're powerful enough," she whispered. "Maybe you can do something good."

Michael stared at her, his hand giving a small spasm under hers.

"Imagine that time is a river," Mallory explained. "Find the stream that flows around this injury, and make it flow backwards."

It was Michael's turn for his eyes to flutter shut as his brows furrowed in concentration. For a moment, nothing happened, and Mallory wondered if she had been wrong about Michael being powerful enough. She jumped as a _crack!_ rang through the room as Michael's nose snapped back into place. "Shit -" she cursed.

Michael gasped as his eyes shot opened, stumbling backwards. He would have ended up on the ground if he hadn't caught himself against the opposite wall. "What did I just do?" he panted.

Mallory smiled, a real one this time. "Something good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know this chapter is short, but so am I, and y'all still love me. Next chapter's gonna be longer, I promise.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to ao3 and ff.net on November 25th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than these two sites, please contact me immediately.


	9. Family Tress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael discovers some old family history, and Mallory puts in her own two cents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this chapter really did not want to be written, but unfortunately, the plot requires it, so I powered through. My poor eyeball died earlier this week, so I was scared that I wouldn't be able to get this out, but I did manage to complete this chapter - yay!

The very walls of the house were alive.

Not alive in the biological sense, which dictated that they would have to have (living) cells, and be respirating in some way, and be able to reproduce. But alive in that they had a soul, as distinct and unique as any human's might be.

Michael trailed a finger along the wooden wall of the foyer, and when he pulls it away he sees that he has collected quite a fine amount of dust. He blew at it, and it dissipated in the air around him. He was walking a little easier, after having healed his leg the previous night.

A creaking sound drew his attention, and his eyes flicked towards the door in the corner of the foyer. He knew it presumably led down to the basement, but it was the one part of the house he had yet to explore. He carefully made his way over to the door as the house seemed to congeal around him. He opened it slowly, but it still made a noise loud enough to wake the dead. He saw a set of concrete stairs, leading down into darkness.

His hand finds a railing within the darkness, and he grips onto it like a vice as he makes his way downwards. He's grateful that he has shoes this time around - he went over to the house next door the previous night to grab said shoes, as well as a change of clothes and some other essentials. There was a noise, echoing through the dankness.

A baby, crying.

Michael went towards the source of the noise, hitting dead ends quite a few times before finding what he was looking for. A screaming baby, laying in a bassinet. And a blonde-haired woman with dark circles under her eyes, rocking the bassinet cradle all while staring at the baby. She looked up when Michael entered the room.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "Why are you in my house?" Her outfit looked like something out of the old silent films that Constance had loved to watch.

Michael took a small step towards her. "This is your house?" he asked. He knew she was dead, and probably had been for a while.

"Well, yes," the woman said with a bitter undertone to her voice. "Whose else would it be?"

Michael shrugged. The house wasn't really anyone's right now, except technically the bank's. It belonged to the ghosts residing here more than anyone else.

The baby began to scream at a higher volume. The woman turned towards the cradle, rocking it back and forth rapidly. "Shush," she scolded, "shush now little monster. What are you even whining about?"

Michael took another step closer, staring at the crib. He had never seen a baby before, save for in pictures. But there was something oddly… familiar about this one. Before he could get any nearer to the cradle, though, the woman made a swatting motion, nearly slapping him. He took a step back as she reprimanded him.

"Back!" she admonished. "Don't touch my baby!"

Michael eyed the cradle, where the child was _still_ screaming at the top of his lungs. "Your baby?" he questioned.

"Yes, _my_ baby," she said, seemingly oblivious to her "son's" crying. "That Harmon woman -" She made a face. "- she keeps trying to steal it for her own. I swear, it's impossible to find any _useful_ help these days." She made a face.

Michael took a smaller step towards the cradle, contemplating the screaming baby. He could tell that both were dead, of course. But he couldn't help but wonder _how_. "Why is he crying?" Michael asked, nodding towards the cradle. The woman glanced down at her child, sniffing.

"He likes to keep me up," the woman complained, starting up the rocking again. "I can't trust any of the other women of the house not to take him from me."

Michael dared to reach out a hand, waiting for the moment when the woman would again slap him away. But she didn't do that, instead watching as Michael touched the baby's small hand. As soon as the two made contact, the baby went quiet, and Michael felt a small pulse run through him.

"He likes you," the woman observed, studying him. "Are you the new nanny I asked Charles to get?" she asked. "The others keep trying to take my baby."

Michael continued staring at the baby, who watched him in return. The child had wrapped his tiny hand around Michael's finger, as if he wanted to ensure that he didn't go. "No," Michael replied softly. "I just wanted to explore a little."

"Well," the woman stated, "you certainly seem better than the others. They keep trying to steal my baby."

Michael glanced at her. "You've said that."

"Don't talk back to me, boy!" the woman snapped, and Michael moved slightly away while still keeping his finger in the baby's grip. He stared at her, feeling a slight shiver running down his spine. He remembered the way his grandmother would yell at him for the very same thing. And the one occasion when she had locked him in the hall closet for a full day.

"What's your name?" he asked quietly, trying to distract himself from that train of thought.

The woman stared at him, looking as though he had just insulted her mother. A thought occurred to him, and Michael thought he might be sick. No - there was _no way_. It was simply impossible. "Nora Montgomery, boy," she answered harshly.

Michael nodded. His brow furrowed. "When did you die?"

Nora actually looked confused at this one. "Excuse me?"

Right. She probably didn't even realize that she was dead.

"I -" Michael started, glancing down at the bassinet cradle. The baby stared up at him with wide eyes, and Michael shook his head at himself. No, that wouldn't work. "What year do you think it is?" he asked instead.

Nora contemplated him for a long moment. "1926!" she finally answered, a hint of arrogance to her voice. "What kind of a question is that?"

Michael sighed, offering a wry smile. "I don't know." He did know. And it disproved his earlier thought, which he was grateful for. He didn't want this forgetful, snobbish person to be related to him in any way, despite the handful of decent qualities he had seen from her.

Michael again glanced down at the baby. He was no expert in small children, but he thought that the little one looked a lot smaller than he should have been. His fingers were still being held in a tight grip, and Michael wondered how long the baby had been dead for. Had he died around the same time as Nora had, or had he died later, with Nora taking up the role of looking after his ghost?

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of someone else coming downstairs, not making any effort to be particularly stealthy. "Nora?" a voice called out. "Are you down here?" It wasn't Mallory's voice, but it did sound feminine.

A woman entered the small little room, eyes flying immediately to the bassinet and the baby in it. "Thank God," she muttered, and Michael took an awkward step backwards as the woman swooped in and lifted the baby out of the bassinet, cradling him against her chest. "Hi, Jeffrey," she whispered, "it's Momma. Momma's got you." Michael felt a flash of envy at the sight, but he repressed it.

Nora sniffed as she looked on at the sight. "How unprofessional," she muttered.

The woman glanced away from the baby - Jeffrey - to Nora. "You know I'd be happy to let you help out with him, Nora," She offered. "You just have to say the words."

"I hardly think that would be a suitable arrangement." Nora pushed herself out of her own chair, walking right through one of the walls. Michael stared after her. For someone who had seemed so invested in protecting her child, if a little confused, she gave up rather quickly.

He had also never seen a ghost disregard physical things like walls before, except on television.

"Come on, baby Jeffrey," the woman breathed. "Let's go find your father."

"Hello?" Michael asked, taking a step towards the woman, who had to acknowledge him safe for reaching around him to grab Jeffrey. She turned around, staring at him for a long moment. After a moment, her eyes grew wide, and she hurried from the room without another sound.

Michael only hesitated a moment before rushing out after them, but they were already gone. It was just him, alone in the basement.

* * *

The sun beamed down on the front lawn of the Murder House. Mallory sat, back against the fence, as she stared up at the imposing building.

She had found a spiral notebook in the house, filled with the math equations and doodles customary of a high schooler. It was covered in a thick layer of dust, so she had assumed that it didn't hold any sort of sentimental value to the ghosts inside the house. She was currently working on a sketch of the house looming above her.

She glanced down at the drawing, and slowly shook her head. "Still not right," she muttered.

She couldn't seem to capture the _feelings_ around the building. The loss and the pain. It was a picture of the house, sure, but the emotion wasn't there.

She knew there were other things that she needed to be doing right now. But she had been silently stalking him through the house for the last couple of hours, and nothing terrible had happened. Nothing particularly interesting, either. He had just been… exploring the house.

She moved to add some more details to her illustration, but stopped as she heard the front door opening. None of the ghosts ever went into the front yard, as far as she knew. She turned around as Michael approached her across the lawn, and he paused.

"I thought you were inside," Mallory said, throwing her sketch onto the grass carelessly. She saw Michael eye it curiously for a moment, before looking back at her.

"I…" He trails off, and Mallory noticed that he was shaking. She pushed herself off the fence, moving to her feet. He was still taller than her standing up, but he seemed so much smaller at the same time. Like he hadn't yet figured out that he was allowed to take up space.

He glanced down at his shoes. "I was hanging around in the basement," he explained slowly. "And I came across this… woman. It was like she knew me."

Mallory contemplated him. She didn't know anything about his past other than the few muddled details Madison and Behold had revealed. Here, she was wandering through the darkness, unsure of how to proceed.

Michael shifted his feet, shooting her an unreadable look. "I think she was my mother," he muttered.

Mallory went stiff. The only information that Madison and Behold had given them about Michael's mother was that she had died in the Murder House, from childbirth, and her ghost harbored no semblance of affection towards him, had even made an unsuccessful attempt to kill him.

Michael sighed. "And…"

Mallory took a small step closer to him, just a small one. "What?"

Michael took in a deep breath, making eye contact with her. "Do you know any magic?" he blurted out. "That could let me know for sure?"

Mallory's mouth opened, then closed, as she stared at him. "You won't have to do anything," Michael continued, misreading her surprise. "I just want to know it. So I can… know."

Sometimes, knowing was worse than any mystery your mind might cook up. Mallory knew that truth intimately.

She cleared her throat. "So what is it you want?" she asked, crossing her arms. "A DNA test?" Feigning nonchalance.

Michael bit his lip. "More like…" He paused, considering. "...something to track down my real parents with. Do you know any spell like that?"

Mallory considered that. And her mind went back to a windy day, spent reading in the Academy library. Something about astral projection, and a way of viewing past events. It used to be commonplace among powerful witches, like Supremes, who needed to see what would happen at a certain time. It wasn't as common anymore, mostly due to more modern spellcraft techniques.

"I don't know any spells that could lead us to your parents," she admitted, and Michael glanced down at his feet. "But," she added, "I do know a way we could maybe see them when they were alive."

Michael looked back up at her, eyes wide. "How?"

Mallory sighed. She could back down. Or she could help someone else. She could help herself gain his trust. "Do you know any trustworthy ghosts here that could watch over us?" she asked.

Michael's brow furrowed. "Why?"

"We're both going to have to be unconscious for the spell to work," Mallory explained. "We need someone who can keep an eye on us."

Michael glanced at the house, biting his lip. "My Aunt Rose? She's pretty patient."

Madison and Behold hadn't mentioned Michael having an aunt. She must not have been one of the people they had interviewed. If Michael thought she would work, then she would work. And Mallory doubted that Michael would try to sabotage this - she knew the feeling of desperation, of wanting to understand a parent, and being unwilling to let anything get in the way of that.

And so Mallory nodded. "Alright. You and Aunt Rose meet me in the master bedroom. I'll explain everything there."

Michael opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it, turning and running towards the house. Mallory glanced down at the ground where her sketch still sat on the overgrown grass, and wondered, not for the first time, what she had gotten herself into. She bent over, picking up the paper and folding it into fourths, sticking it in the back pocket of the pair of jeans she had found in the Murder House's attic.

Inside the house was no cooler than outside, but at least there was more shade than the front yard had, under the full force of the California sun. Mallory dug through one of the drawers in the office, finding some candles that were luckily unscented - just boring wicks and wax, exactly what she wanted. She took them upstairs, to the master bedroom. The power company wasn't giving the house any power, so it was perpetually dim in the house, but Mallory shut the curtains anyway, setting the candles at various places in the room before lighting them with pyrokinesis.

She had just finished lighting all the candles when Michael entered the room, a small child in a bright yellow dress trailing after him. Mallory gasped when she got a full look at the girl's face - she had no eyes. Just holes, where they should have been.

The girl gazed up at her, and Mallory got the impression that she could see her even without eyes. "Are you Mallory?" she asked.

Mallory stared at her. This couldn't possibly be the "Aunt Rose" Michael had been referring to. Mallory had expected an adult woman, not a child. Although, it did make sense, in a way. Why Madison and Behold wouldn't have gotten an interview with her, or even _mentioned_ her.

"Yeah, that's me," Mallory answered, shooting a look at Michael, who was examining one of the candles. "Didn't you say she can watch us?" Mallory whispered, and he turned to look at her, eyes wide.

"She can," he insisted, "and she's the only one in the house that I trust to do that."

Mallory groaned internally, shooting another look at the little girl. She was tempted to say no, to try to find someone a little more mature, but there was no guarantee that she would be able to do that, or even that the spirits here would _want_ to communicate with her (Rose was the ghost she had seen here so far). And anyway, Michael trusted her. Acting as if she trusted Michael would get her one step closer to gaining _his_ trust.

"Fine," Mallory acquiesced, "she can watch us." She gave Rose a once-over, biting her tongue. "Can you watch us?"

Rose shrugged. "It's boring here. As long as Mommy doesn't come, I'll watch you."

Mallory nodded, telling herself that it was probably the best option she had, if she wanted to help Michael meet his parents. She sat down on the side of the bed furthest from the door, patting the spot next to her. Michael sat down behind her, closest to the door. Mallory wondered if he was contemplating bailing on her.

"I've never done this before," Mallory warned, "but I've read about it." Mallory glanced behind her, noticing Michael looking down at his feet. "We won't go through with this if you don't want to."

Michael glanced back at her. "No," he said, voice shaking, "I want to." He stared at her for a moment, taking a deep breath. "How do we do this?" he asked, voice stronger.

Mallory glanced at the dusty set of pillows sitting at the headboard. "I think we should lie down." She moved so that she was laying on her back, staring up at the aging ceiling, resting her head on the pillow, and a moment later, she heard Michael follow suit. Michael turned to face her, and there was something… odd, about laying next to him on a double bed. Like she could have woken up and turned to her to see him lying beside her. She didn't like the feeling.

"Now?" Michael asked.

Mallory glanced up at the ceiling to avoid having to look at him. "Someone should really fix that crack," Mallory muttered, staring at a rather unsettling spot on the ceiling, "or the roof might cave in."

She heard rather than saw Michael turning towards where she was looking. "Yeah," he agreed. It was Mallory's turn to move her head to look at him. Like this, he was almost impossible to connect to the man she had met at Outpost 3. She couldn't keep a laugh from escaping her throat.

"Think about being separate from your body," Mallory suggested. "Imagine your soul floating out of your body and wandering around the house on its own."

Michael chewed on his lower lip, still staring at the ceiling. "Like a ghost?"

"Exactly!" Mallory smiled at him, though he didn't acknowledge it. "Except your body is still alive, here on this bed."

Michael glanced at her. "How would that work?"

"It's called astral projection," Mallory explained. "It's a way for the soul to visit places the body might not be able to."

"Like the ocean?" Michael asked.

"Yeah," Mallory clarified, "if you really wanted to." She turned onto her back again, blinking at Rose, who had been so quiet Mallory had forgotten she was there. "Or the past," she said quietly. "This particular spell is called _Tempus Somni_."

Mallory remembered again that day, reading a book from the academy library. It had been many years since she had seen that text, but she was fairly certain that she remembered how to perform the spell. And she remembered - "We might have to hold hands," Mallory suggested.

"Why?" Michael questioned, and Mallory decided not to acknowledge how he shifted ever-so-slightly away from her.

Mallory shook her head, swearing internally. "I don't know, it's some lame shit about shared energies." She forced a laugh. "If we both want to go back, we have to be connected somehow."

Michael shifted, sheets rustling under him. "Is there another way we can… connect?"

There was another way for them to connect, actually, but Mallory did not like it very much, and she thought Michael probably wouldn't enjoy it either. She shot him a pointed look, and his eyes went wide, a blush creeping up his face. He grabbed her hand quickly, making an effort to look anywhere _but_ at her. "I think I'll hold your hand," he muttered.

"Thought so," Mallory said.

There was a moment of awkward silence. It seemed like there had been a lot of those recently.

"You keep thinking about astral projection," Mallory instructed. "I'll handle the rest."

"Alright," Michael answered quietly.

Both of their eyes fluttered shut. In the darkness, Mallory tried to envision the spellbook. It had been an older read, written mostly by hand in a clean script. And slowly, careful not to mispronounce anything, Mallory recited the words to the spell. " _Relinque corporis, sequere tempus, descensus per transiit in praeteritum. Somni!_ "

Nothing happened. Mallory closed her eyes, tighter, picturing the spellbook again. Thinking about leaving her body, like she had told Michael to. Thinking about _Michael_ , with his grip on her hand, how warm his own was in hers. " _Somni!_ " she shouted into the silence.

It felt like falling through a heavy wind, as chills ran up her spine and she felt time whirl past her. When the sensation stopped, she opened her eyes. She wasn't lying on the bed anymore; she and Michael were standing by the large window alcove. The room looked different, too - the dust was gone, the bed had a different pair of sheets on it, and there were the kind of things on the wall you'd expect a married couple to have. The time had changed as well - before, it had been late afternoon, when the sun was still bright in the sky, but now it was definitely nighttime.

Mallory reached out a hand, moving to feel one of the curtains being blown by an invisible wind. Her hand went through the fabric, and she gasped. "Oh, fuck. It worked."

"Fucking hell," Michael muttered, and Mallory jumped, having momentarily forgotten he was there. He was staring at the room with wide eyes that seemed to look everywhere but at her. Not that Mallory cared. She was doing this to gain his trust, nothing more. She told herself this for what felt like the thousandth time, and she still wondered why she didn't believe it.

Michael turned, moving towards the door. Almost letting go of Mallory's hand. She gripped on tighter, preventing him from letting go, and he turned to give her a curious look. "If you break the connection, the spell will stop working," Mallory warned, "and we'll be sent to the present again." Seh vaguely remembered something about that in the spellbook. Or maybe she did. Maybe she just didn't want either of them to be alone in the past.

She probably just didn't want to let him out of her sight.

"Alright," Michael said, staring at their interlocked hands.

Mallory was about to suggest that they go and explore the rest of the house, see if they could find anyone that _wasn't_ dead, when two people walked into the bedroom. A woman, with strawberry-blonde curls and a tired face, and a man who seemed utterly unremarkable. Mallory could see the resemblance between Michael and the woman almost instantly, with their similar hair and eyes colors, but she could see no similarities between Michael and the man. Maybe he took after his mother?

"I'm just worried about her," the woman was saying. "I mean, starting a new school -"

"Vivien," the man interjected. "Violet will be fine. She's a tough girl!"

The woman (Vivien?) sighed. "I just think we should sit down and talk. Tomorrow morning."

"Alright," the man agreed, if a little timidly.

Vivien sat down on a padded bench directly in front of Michael and Mallory, though her back was to them. Mallory felt her eyes going to Michael, who was staring at the woman, scarcely breathing. He reached out a shaking hand to touch Vivien's shoulder, but he passed right through her. "Mom, he whispered.

Mallory envied him, in a way. He had this shining image of his parents in his mind that wouldn't be tarnished easily. He got to live thinking his parents had been the most wonderful people, because they were dead, and the dead are far less easy to accuse of heinous acts. And even as he grew older, and he learned more about the truth of the darkness within him, he still got to have the image of a powerful father figure ruling on a throne from Hell, employing him for the most important task.

She felt the urge to throw up.

The man bent over Vivien, offering a small smile. "I'll go check on Violet," he said, and Mallory's brow furrowed. She thought she remembered a Violet - Madison had mentioned her as being 'tragically in love with Michael's father', although Madison did have a tendency to over exaggerate. But something didn't seem to be adding up here.

Vivien nodded, and the man left the room. Mallory saw Michael's eyes trailing after him. "Can we follow him?" Michael asked.

Mallory only hesitated for a moment before answering. "Alright."

Michael practically dragged Mallory down the hallway, and Mallory had to almost run to keep up. The dark haired man was moving towards the stairs, muttering about 'get Viv back'. And then, something passed him. Something distinctly not on the mortal coil.

It was most likely a man, judging by the body structure, or at least it had been a man at one point in time. No other features were discernible, as the rest of its body was covered in a rubber latex suit, the kind you'd expect to see at a BDSM convention. The dark haired man didn't acknowledge the figure - in fact, his focus seemed to be entirely somewhere else.

Michael jerked Mallory around, so they were instead following the rubber-clad figure. Mallory felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as the rubber man made his way towards the bedroom. If she had thought she was going to throw up before, now she was going to straight up die.

The rubber figure stopped in the doorway to the master bedroom, so that Mallory and Michael had to peak around him to see what was going on.

Vivien glanced up at the figure, seemingly unperturbed. "Hot," she commented. "I thought I told you to throw that thing away."

Michael stiffened next to Mallory, but neither could bring themselves to look away.

Vivien smiled, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Oh, you're not talking?" she stood up, moving over to the double bed. "Well, I'll give you points for creativity. We were pretty hot this afternoon."

Michael squeezed down on Mallory's hand, so tight Mallory was afraid he might break bone. She didn't say anything, though, only gave his hand a small squeeze in return.

Vivien was shrugging off her light robe, full-out _grinning_ at the rubber man. "You really wanna go for round two, huh?" She shrugged, eyes flickering to the bed. "Well, I can be kinky."

Mallory would later say that she didn't remember it, or that she was looking away. But the truth was, she was enraptured as she watched the rubber-clad figure climb on top of Vivien, as he unzipped his pants. It was like when you see a violent car accident by the side of the road, and you can't help but slow down to see the carnage.

"I can't watch this," Michael whispered. Mallory turned to see him, frozen as he stared at what was happening on the bed.

"Michael -" Mallory started, but that was all she got out before Michael suddenly let go of her hand, and the two opened their eyes in the same room, albeit dustier, and several years in the future.

"I shouldn't have gone back there," Michael said, voice quavering. And before Mallory could say anything, he ran from the room, footsteps echoing down the hallway.

"Michael!" Mallory shouted, pushing herself into a sitting position. But he didn't come back to her, and a moment later, Mallory heard one of the doors down the hallway slam.

Mallory sighed, falling back into the bed. The guilt she felt was about potentially fucking up her plan to gain his trust. That was it. She sabotaged herself by believing that digging deeper was a good idea, and now she had to work ten times harder to gain his trust.

Except that wasn't true. She cared about him, even despite the person he would become. She cared about the boy who was scared to die even though the universe wouldn't allow it. For the person that was so desperate to learn more about his family, that he was willing to look past his reservations and fears about her to find what he wanted. Like she cared for everyone, like she wanted the best for everyone.

And maybe that made her a terrible person, because she cared about everyone. And she did believe that she would have to kill him for the greater good. But she was not above mercy. She was not above being a decent human being. She was not above making sure it would be as painless as possible, far less agonizing than him being hit by a car multiple times.

"Fuck me," she muttered, staring at that crack in the ceiling. The one she had shared dry jokes about. Maybe the universe intended that crack to be there, just as it intended for her to be unable to kill Michael Langdon.

And so, she pushed herself back into a sitting position, so that her feet brushed the ground. She remembered meeting her own parents, after years of living with her grandmother and having never met them. She remembered that feeling - disappointment. Neither her mother nor her stepfather ever lived up to the pedestal she had set them upon.

She knew how Michael felt right now. And so she stood up. And she went to find him. Not to gain his trust. Just to be a decent human being, the part of herself she had tried to abandon. Nobody said she had to be cruel when she killed him. And now, she definitely wasn't going to be, not when she could be the better person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was uploaded to the internet on December 11th, 2020. If you see this anywhere other than ao3 or Fanfiction.Net, please contact me immediately.


	10. Garden of Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael receives comfort from several unexpected sources.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all my poor brain is so stressed right now, so here's this chapter, two days late. I was going to blame it on the holidays, but honestly there's no excuse. I really should put this kind of thing on my calendar.
> 
> Also, thank you to Arham459Serpent for looking over this chapter for me. A lifesaver, truly. Y'all probably would be very confused with this chapter if it weren't for them.

Michael ran from the room, ignoring Mallory's shouts. He needed to get out of that room, needed to forget the things he had just seen. The man in the Rubber Suit. His mother, presumably in a relationship with at least two people.

Michael found an empty room at the end of the hallway, the door wide open. He rushed inside, throwing himself on the bed, the door slamming shut behind him and rattling the house without him even touching it. He curled up on the dusty blankets, staring at the pale blue wall. Dimly, he realized he was crying.

More than anything, he wanted to go back home. He wanted things to be normal again. He wanted to live in his house with his grandmother and go back to being a relatively normal toddler. He wanted…

Well, it didn't matter. The world had never asked his opinion on anything. Why would it start now? It was all so pointless, and sometimes Michael just wanted it all to end. Just, get rid of it all, and make a better place, where his grandmother was still alive and didn't hate him, and he grew up with good parents and maybe even a sibling or two and he never got in that car accident and -

"Are you okay?" a voice asked behind him. Michael jumped, rolling over on his side to see a roughly-teenaged girl watching him. She had dirty-blonde hair and was wearing a loose purple dress over a white T-shirt, and she had the kind of face that had seen far too much crying.

He wiped at his eyes, trying to hide the evidence of his tears. "Who are you?" he questioned.

"I'm Violet," the girl said, offering her hand out to him. "I live in the neighborhood." Michael didn't take her hand, only stared at it until she lowered it.

"No, you don't," Michael expressed quietly. "You're dead."

Violet's eyes widened as she opened her mouth to defend herself, then closed it again. "What gave me away?" she finally asked.

Michael glanced away from her, at the mattress and muddle of woven blankets he was laying on. "Alive spirits smell like something," he informed her. "You don't smell like anything."

Violet didn't say anything for a moment, and Michael chanced a glance at the girl to see that her mouth was dangling open in a way that would have been comical if Michael had been in a better mood. She noticed him looking at her, and quickly shut her mouth. "Who are you?" she inquired.

Michael reached out behind him, grabbing one of the pillows from the end of the bed and bringing it over to himself, resting his head on it so he would have to crane his neck so much to look at her. "I'm Michael," he said, giving a soft little sneeze at the dust that emanated from the pillow.

Violet continued looking at him in that odd way. "Do I…" she trailed off as Michael waited expectantly, "...know you from somewhere?"

It was Michael's turn to look at her in an odd way. "I've never met you," he informed her, albeit hesitantly. He could have met her pre-growth spurt, and simply forgotten - a lot of memories from when he was smaller seemed to be jumbled, confused. But he remembered anything that had happened within this house perfectly, and unless Violet was a new ghost, he likely had never seen her before.

Violet considered him. "I definitely know you from somewhere," she muttered under her breath, but Michael still heard her.

Michael turned on his side, burying his face into the pillow. He didn't particularly want to talk to some random teenage ghost right now, no matter how familiar she may or may not be. He was sure she was a very nice person or ghost or whatever, but he needed to be left alone. No Mallory, no Violet, just Michael, left alone in a room. Scratch that. Michael, left alone in a room with his grandmother comforting him and loving him again like she used to, but he knew that would never happen.

And then he remembered something. From the flashback. Not how cool and strangely relaxing Mallory's hand had felt in his, no, he would never ever think of that. He remembered his mother, or maybe it was her dark-haired partner, referencing someone named Violet. The dark-haired one, he had said something about 'going to check on her'. Michael wondered if that could possibly be the same Violet that was standing in front of him now. And if so, he wondered how she was connected to his mother and her dark-haired partner.

"Look," Violet was saying, "you don't wanna hang around here. Trust me, not every spirit in this house is as nice as I am." She was still here? Normally spirits disappeared after you made it clear you weren't going to pay them any attention.

Michael curled up into a smaller ball, wishing she would stop talking. If she had to be in here with him, the least she could do was make herself invisible so he could pretend that he was alone. And that's when he remembered the words that his grandmother had taught him upon his first visit to the house, for if he ever found himself in a situation where one of the spirits was threatening him. "Go away," he mumbled, still not looking up from the pillow.

Violet did not go away. Michael felt it as she sat down on the bed, despite the fact that ghosts technically didn't weigh anything. It was more like the bed was moving downwards to make space for her. Michael guessed that she wasn't the type of ghost who preferred to travel through solid objects.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Violet asked.

Michael shook his head, still not looking at her. "No."

Violet sighed, and Michael felt in when she shifted her 'weight' on the mattress. "Go away," Michael whispered. "Please."

She still did not go away. Instead, she shook her head. "Not until you leave this house."

Michael turned to glare at her. "Why?"

Violet sighed again. Michael wondered if she did that a lot. "There are a shitload of ghosts here, Michael," she said. "Do you really want to be one?"

Michael stared at her for a moment. It actually was a tempting offer. Kill himself in the house so that he could be with his family forever. Constance would have to forgive him at some point if they were stuck in the house together for the rest of eternity. He could find the knife from downstairs, the one he and Mallory had both used to make their oaths, and slit his throat. He could hang himself from the chandelier. And even if he couldn't pull through, he could always ask Mallory to do it for him. She'd probably be glad for the opportunity.

"Kinda," he muttered. What did it even matter anymore? It wasn't like there was even anyone that was still alive who might miss him.

Violet actually froze at this. Most living people are constantly moving, even if they don't realise it, shifting ever so lightly to keep their balance or their position. Most ghosts still do that as a habit from when they were alive. They don't need to - it's the same as making the motions of breathing, for them. But Violet had gone completely still, and she was staring at Michael with wide eyes. And there was a memory there - something Michael doubted she would ever talk about.

Michael turned away from here. "Leave me alone," he muttered.

Violet seemed to be incapable of leaving people alone. Michael wondered if she had always been that way, or if it was something new that came with being a ghost. "If you want to talk, you can to me," she said.

Michael shot her a venomous glare. "Why would I talk to you?"

Violet shrugged. "Because I don't have anyone to tell what you said?"

She did have a point. And maybe if he humored her, she would finally leave him alone.

Michael took in a shaking breath, glancing down at the blanket. It was frayed, and Michael wondered how long it had been in the house. How long anything and anyone here had been in the house. He wondered how easy it was to lose track of time, when you were effectively eternal (Michael could end that eternity, an instinct told him). He wondered if Violet knew how long she had been dead for.

He glanced up at her. "I just wanted to meet my parents," he said quietly. "They died before I was born." Violet nodded, prompting him to continue. He took another deep breath. "Turns out my mother didn't even have me with her husband. She had sex with someone else."

Violet's eyes flicked downwards. "Shit."

Neither one of them said anything for a long moment. But Michael didn't really mind if Violet was there. It had felt nice to tell someone about that. To get some of his tangled-up thoughts out in the open. Maybe persistent ghosts were good for something. He supposed it was better than her being persistent in brutally murdering him, although he wasn't sure how much better.

"My parents are dead, too," Violet said suddenly.

Michael glanced at her. "What?"

The girl shuddered, taking in a shaky breath. "Yeah," she started, "my mom died giving birth to my brother Jeffrey, and he's dead, too. My father was murdered not soon after."

Michael froze. My mom died giving birth to my brother Jeffrey. Giving birth to my brother Jeffrey. My brother Jeffrey.

A woman entered the small little room, eyes flying immediately to the bassinet and the baby in it. "Thank God," she muttered, and Michael took an awkward step backwards as the woman swooped in and lifted the baby out of the bassinet, cradling him against her chest. "Hi, Jeffrey," she whispered, "it's Momma. Momma's got you."

"..your brother Jeffrey?" he managed to choke out.

Violet sighed, and for a moment Michael swore there was the smell of something on her breath. The smell… the pills his grandmother used to take, before she flushed them down the toilet. Like pills, but worse. So much worse. "Yeah," she answered, "he's my dad's son. Turns out my mom was raped by this guy in -" Her voice trailed off here, and she took a deep breath before continuing. "- a rubber bondage suit twelve hours after she got pregnant with Jeffrey, and she got pregnant from that, too. That baby - whatever it was, it killed the both of them."

What?

Michael felt like he couldn't breathe. No, that was wrong. He literally could not breathe. He couldn't fucking breathe, because his throat had closed up and there was no air to his lungs and shit, shit.

My mom was raped by this guy in a rubber bondage suit.

That baby - whatever it was, it killed the both of them.

No. No no no. This was a bad dream. He'd wake in his bed, safe and sound. He was in Hell, he had to be, he died in that hit and run, this was all some elaborate post-mortem dream, and no no no fuck no.

What the fuck?

"No," he whispered.

Violet shot him a glance. "What?"

"Go away," Michael said shakily. Violet opened her mouth to say something, when just then there was a creak from the door. Michael glanced at it, and when he looked back, Violet was gone.

* * *

Mallory made her way to the end of the hall, to the door she had heard Michael slam behind him. As she moved closer to the door, she heard voices. "What?" a distinctly feminine voice was saying.

"Go away," Michael responded, and Mallory didn't miss the tremble in his voice. She pushed open the door slowly, so as the peak through it, and winced as a loud _creaaak_ echoed through the house. Michael glanced up from where he was laying on a dusty mattress, meeting her eyes. Mallory swore she caught a glimpse of movement next to Michael, but no one else was in the room.

"What do you want?" Michael asked, giving her a venomous glare.

Mallory bit her lip, before pushing the door the rest of the way open. "I'm just checking up on you," she said, gripping the doorknob with one hand.

Michael glanced away from her. "Well, fuck off."

Mallory took a step farther into the room, and shivered. She didn't think that the hallway outside had been this cold. Michael seemed unbothered by the temperature. "Who were you talking to?" she questioned.

Michael pushed himself into a sitting position from where he was laying, staring at her. "I don't know what you're talking about," he answered quickly. Too quickly.

"Was it one of the ghosts?" Mallory tried. Michael didn't say anything. "Michael," she pressed, "was it -"

"It wasn't my parents," Michael interrupted, "if that's what you mean."

Mallory sighed. She had known that this probably wasn't a good idea. Had she thought that they were going to cuddle up on the couch and talk about their issues? Had she thought that she could ever get anything right with Michael Langdon?

"I think she was my sister," Michael said quietly from behind her. Mallory stopped walking, turning back around to face Michael.

"What?"

"Half-sister," Michael clarified. "Violet. She -" Michael took in a shaky breath. "She… mentioned something. I -"

Mallory took a step farther into the room. "Did she know who you were?" she asked.

His eyes darted down to the pile of blankets he was sitting on, and he slowly shook his head. "I don't know," he muttered. "I don't think so. She thinks her brother is - not me." Mallory took another tentative step towards the bed, and she saw Michael automatically scoot backwards.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she promised. "I just want to show you something."

Michael considered her for a moment, before pushing himself up from the bed. Mallory was surprised at this, but she made an attempt not to show it. The two made their way through the old house, and Mallory thanked the souls of the Supremes that they didn't encounter any ghosts along the way, or at least, none that they could see.

They ended up in the attic. The room was dusty, with piles of old things left behind by previous owners, and even silver chains hanging from the ceiling in one corner that gave Mallory some bad vibes. She stood on the bed, under the small skylight, and beckoned Michael forwards. "Come on," she called. She didn't wait for Michael to follow, climbing out through the skylight and sitting herself down on one of the beams on the roof, facing west. It was already late in the day, and the light was growing dim.

She heard rather than saw Michael pulling himself onto the roof before he sat down next to her, although "next to" was a bit of an over exaggeration. He sat five feet away from her, though still on the same horizontal beam.

"It's windy up here," he commented.

Mallory pointed dead ahead of them, to where the sun had sunken down to meet the horizon. From here, they could see all the way to the choppy waters of the ocean, and the sunlight reflecting off of them. "Look," she said quietly. Michael turned to stare at the sunset. It was a nice sunset, filled with pinks and oranges and red and even some purples. "I always loved watching the sun set," Mallory reminisced, "when I could." It looked different somehow from the ones she had watched growing up in Florida. But it was still the same sunset.

"Yeah," Michael replied. And for a long moment, the two simply watched the setting sun. But Mallory couldn't help but find her eyes somewhere else. Michael's face as he stared at the sunset, bathed in the dim lighting, was something new entirely. And she thought that he looked beautiful, in a sort of way. She questioned the thought almost as soon as she had it, shoving it down into the darkest corners of her mind. She definitely didn't need to be thinking about that.

"Why did you try to kill me?" Michael asked suddenly. He hadn't asked her this in a while - ever since the hospital, in fact. But Mallory got the impression that he wanted a different answer from her this time.

"I -" she started. She glanced down the roof, at the way it sloped before a two story drop down to the lawn. "I had this… vision," she lied. Well, half-lied. Technically it had been a vision, by definition. It was easier to explain than time travel. Michael turned to look at her. "I guess I just got scared," she said, daring to glance at Michael. He tilted his head.

"Of what?" he asked. Mallory looked away from him again, this time back to the quickly fading sun.

"Of the future," she answered quietly, but she knew that Michael could still hear her. "It wasn't exactly beautiful. But…" She trailed off. She stared at the sloping roof below her again, and the overgrown lawn below that. She could push him. She could reach out and shove him forwards, and the fall would likely kill him. Except she didn't want to. She didn't want to kill him at all.

"I don't want the way I stop it to be through murder," Mallory admitted. Michael didn't say anything for a moment, and Mallory wondered if he was contemplating pushing her. She wouldn't blame him if he was.

"So how are you going to stop it?" Michael asked finally.

The sound Mallory made was a mixture between laughter and crying. "I don't know," she confessed.

She was surprised when Michael let out a small laugh. And then she was laughing, too. And then they were just sitting there, watching as the last rays of light disappeared below the horizon.

It was different, watching this with someone else. When she was younger, watching the sunset had always been something she had done by herself. Last night, when she had climbed out to the roof by herself to get away from the house's stifling heat, it had still been just her. But with Michael there, she was no longer just watching nature. She was watching him. It was different, yes, but not in a bad way.

"I've never watched the sunset before," Michael told her. Mallory turned to face him, surprised. She wasn't entirely certain of his age (Madison's account had been a bit confusing), but she knew she had probably seen plenty of sunsets by the time she was as old as him.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," Michael confirmed. "You can't see it from my backyard because of all the trees, and my grandmother never liked me leaving the house."

"Oh." Mallory didn't know what to say to that. She thought it was somewhat sad, to have never seen the sunset before.

"Yeah," Michael said, shooting her a glance. "I like it, though."

"Really?" Mallory felt a smile spreading over her face, despite herself.

"Yeah," Michael said, glancing down at Mallory's feet. Mallory followed her gaze, wiggling her toes in the heeled boots she was still wearing. "Aren't you nervous about climbing up here in heels?" Michael asked, and wow, that was new. Mallory had never heard him sound so… carefree.

Mallory shrugged. "No. I have a friend who can climb all over the place in heels." She stopped then, thinking about Madison. She hadn't gotten to know the other witch very well, and she missed even her desperately. More than anything, she still wanted to get back to her sister witches. Figure out a way to resurrect Misty and Madison as soon as she possibly could.

She looked to Michael again. He was staring at her, still waiting for a response. It felt like her throat had closed up, barely allowing her enough oxygen to breathe properly.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. Michael glanced at her.

"What?" His brows were furrowed together in confusion. Mallory sighed.

"I'm sorry I tried to kill you." The words rang true. Michael turned away from her, looking back to the last rays of sunlight still desperately reaching away from the horizon. And maybe that was all there was to life. Watching the sunset next to your mortal enemy, and finding that it wasn't as bad as you expected it to be.


	11. Life After Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghosts decide how best to scare away the new residents. Michael finds himself in a dangerous poistion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: There is a scene in this chapter with some nasty implications, but there's nothing too graphic. The original version was much worse, but I ended up changing it.

The basement of the Murder House was a dank, dreary place, and yet somehow, almost every ghost in the house tended to gravitate towards that place, for one reason or another. Maybe the dankness and the dust and the pungent scent of decay made them feel like they were in their graves, where they were supposed to be. Or maybe it was just the fact that ghosts naturally found themselves in places where they could easily give the living a good scare.

No matter the exact reason why the ghosts always ended up there, the basement was where a group of ghosts met whenever new occupants moved into the house. There were eight ghosts in the group, nine if you included Baby Jeffrey, who was always cradled in Vivien's arms during the meeting.

Violet lurked in the dark corner of the basement, opposite where Maria and Gladys silently watched the proceedings. From where she stood, Violet could see her parents sitting on a musty couch, chatting with Moira, and Travis sitting on the floor, showing Elizabeth something. Violet had never talked much during these meetings. It would have been overkill, she had always thought, with both her parents already leading the meeting. This conversation didn't need another Harmon voice.

Violet wrapped her cardigan closer around herself, shivering. It felt like she had always been cold, ever since she had died. Too cold. Her parents had never mentioned anything about this. But their bodies weren't buried on the lot, not a hundred feet away from where they were standing, so what did they know? Apparently being dead meant being cold. And having no scent, if the kid was to be believed.

Her father had sat up straight on the couch, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Everyone!" he shouted, and the chatter in the space quickly died down as all eyes turned to him.

Her mother passed Baby Jeffrey to Ben before standing up, looking around at all the ghosts assembled there. "There are two new people in the house," Vivien informed them. "Two kids, staying illegally. We need to scare them away."

Travis was leaning forward, eyebrows furrowed together. "Kids?" he asked, and Violet remembered how he always was with the Harvey children, and with Beauregard.

"Teenagers," Ben clarified. "A boy and a girl."

"How old are they?" Moira queried, moving to sit down on an old wooden stool next to the couch.

"The boy seems about Violet's age," Ben guessed, shooting a look towards where his daughter stood. "The girl is a little older."

"Do they have anywhere else to go?" Travis asked.

Violet's mother sighed, and Violet noticed her clenched her hands together, the way she always did when she was nervous. "It doesn't matter," Vivien said. "What matters is getting them out of this house."

Violet took a step away from her corner, looking to Travis specifically. "They don't have anywhere to go, Travis," she told him, speaking over her mother, who pursed her lips. Violet was aware of every eye in the room fixed on her, she who almost never talked during these little meetings, if she even talked at all. She knew she had a reputation in the house. She was the little girl who killed herself, who fell in love with the person who had killed more than the rest of them combined, who was the Harmons' daughter. Those things had made her a figure of interest within the house. She also knew, without asking, why she rarely ran into any of the other ghosts here.

"Violet, now's not -" Vivien started, but Violet cut her off.

"I was talking to the boy earlier," Violet informed them all. "He's a sweet kid. And an orphan." Her mother paled at this, moving closer to Ben. Violet continued talking. "Travis is right. We can't send them out to the streets."

Ben placed a hand on Vivien's shoulder, giving Violet one of those looks that said she was acting like an immature child. Violet hated that look. "Well then," Ben asked, "what should we do, Violet?"

Violet had the sudden, uncomfortable realization that her speaking up meant that she was intended to come up with the alternative to scaring those poor kids away. She managed an eye roll, sneaking in glances at everyone in the room, who still had their eyes glued to her. "I don't know!" she exclaimed.

Her father sighed, looking around at all the other spirits in the room. No one offered anything. "We can't let them stay here," Ben said.

Elizabeth Short glanced up from where she was sitting on the floor beside Travis. "Well, then, Doctor Harmon" she started, with genuine curiosity in her voice. "What do we do?"

And for a long moment, there was silence in the basement of Murder House. What exactly _did_ you do, when you were deciding someone else's fate, and both options were terrible ones? It was times like this that Violet wished she could talk to - well, someone she wouldn't be talking to anytime soon. That person could have at least made her feel better, if nothing else. Not that he would make her feel much better now. In fact, his presence here would probably only do the opposite.

Ben was the first to speak up. "At least if they're out on the streets, they're not dead!"

"And what," Violet interjected, "they're being raped to death by some pervert instead of dying quickly with a stab wound in here?"

"We can't chase them out," Travis stated, voice steady.

"I'm with Travis," Elizabeth agreed. Violet shot them both a grateful look. She had never really bonded with the other two, preferring solitude or her parents over any of the other spirits in the house. She was sure the others probably thought she was aloof, stuck-up. But at least there were still some people who were willing to back her up.

Vivien, meanwhile, was shooting a meaningful glance at Moira, who sighed. "Do we really want to condemn these children to eternity in this house?"

Vivien nodded. "Thank you, Moira." Moira gave the other spirit a pointed look before sitting back down on her stool.

Travis was glancing in between the two women, his brows furrowed. "Wait, why do you want them to leave?" he asked, pushing himself up into a standing position. "Aren't you all about your kids?"

Violet rolled her eyes. "Bullshit," she muttered. She loved her mother, and she knew that her mother loved both her and her brother, even if Baby Jeffrey was permanently stuck in infant form. But Vivien was not the best mother in the world. She hadn't even noticed that her own daughter was dead, for fuck's sake! Add that to all the other questionable parenting decisions both she and Violet's father had made in the years before the family's deaths, and you definitely weren't looking at someone who was 'all about their kids', as Travis would have put it.

"I'm concerned about their _lives_ , Travis!" Vivien was saying, well, yelling more like. Violet didn't miss the tremble in her mother's voice. And staring at the others in the room, at the argument that Violet was technically responsible for, she realised something. Like grasping at something she couldn't reach for so long, and now it was finally in her hands, and she could take a good long look at it. Could see it up close, for just as hideous as it was.

"What kind of risk are they in, exactly?" Violet wondered. Realised. Whatever word was right.

Ben shot Violet a look, condescending in a way that made Violet want to scream and throw a fit like she was a little girl again. Just a stupid little girl who wanted to be scary, who didn't have any idea what 'scary' really meant. "You know better than anyone how dangerous these ghosts can be, Violet," Ben said coldly.

"Which ghosts are going to hurt them?" Elizabeth interjected.

Ben shifted Baby Jeffrey to his other arm, so that his left hand was free. "Hayden -" he tried.

"She doesn't kill kids," Travis stated, and Violet couldn't help but wonder what it must be like for Travis. He was still on friendly terms with Hayden, Violet knew that for a fact. How could he stand to look at her, after she had murdered him the way she had? He didn't hold a grudge against her - he had even mentioned a couple times that he had forgiven her. It was an emotion Violet would never be able to relate to, she thought to herself.

"Thaddeus -" Vivien offered, siding with Ben. Trying to come up with ghosts that could potentially kill kids.

"A toddler?" Elizabeth questioned.

"This isn't up for debate!" Vivien shouted, silencing every voice in the room. Momentarily, at least.

"This isn't a fucking dictatorship, Mom!" Violet yelled back, stepping farther into the space.

And all was silent for a brief, blissful moment.

"Violet -" her mother started, but Violet interrupted her.

"Why do you care so much about this, Mom?" the teenager demanded. "And don't give me that bullshit 'don't want them to die in the house'."

Vivien and Ben shared a long glance. And then Ben turned to Moira, still perched on her wooden stool. "Moira," he said, "can you hold onto Jeffrey for a moment?"

Moira nodded. "Of course, Mr. Harmon." Ben passed Baby Jeffrey into the old maid's open arms, and Moira gave a small coo over the baby that went unacknowledged by the other spirits.

"Let's talk privately," Vivien suggested to Violet.

Violet was tempted to refuse. She rolled her eyes, making sure both of her parents got her message. "Fine," she muttered.

The group ended up going upstairs, standing in the front yard. Most of the ghosts rarely left the actual house, even though they could technically go out onto the lawn and to the edge of the property if they wanted to. There was something… strange, about standing out there in the lawn, and seeing the world that had all but forgotten about you. Violet could still remember rattling the front gates, screaming and crying for someone to _see her_ , because she thought that she was about to die. It had already been a bit too late for that.

Violet turned her back on the street to glare at her parents, who were watching uneasily. "What?" she demanded.

Ben and Vivien shared a glance that Violet couldn't decipher. Vivien spoke first. "Violet…" she began, "how much did you see of that night?"

Violet stared at her mother for a long moment, wondering which night the older woman could be referring to. Vivien noticed her daughter's confusion.

"The night I died," Vivien clarified. Violet gave a casual-feeling shrug, but inside she was shaking. She remembered that night well. Telling her father that she was dead as he dragged her screaming through the house. Attempting to banish Chad and Patrick with tips from a somewhat phony psychic. And her mother… and then _him_ …

Yes, she remembered quite a lot from that night. But she supposed that Vivien was probably only referring to that violent birth.

"I was there when you died," Violet said. "And I saw Jeffrey later." She had comforted her mother, through her death, because someone needed to be there, telling her that it was alright to let go. And later, though she didn't know how much later, because time moves differently for the dead, her parents had introduced her to her baby brother.

"Remember your mother was pregnant with twins?" Ben added.

Violet's eyes widened. She had known that her mother was pregnant with twins, but it had been easy for her to forget about that in the chaos of trying to protect those same twins, watching her mother die, telling her father she was dead, and what had happened with… a person. A person that she did not need to be thinking about, thank you very much. She felt extremely dumb, now, for never realizing that herself.

"What happened to the other one?" Violet asked. She was sure she would have noticed a second baby in the house. "Is it dead, too?"

Vivien shook her head. "No, Violet," her mother said. "We'd know if he was in the house." As Violet had thought herself, but she didn't say that aloud. Her brother was alive then, or at least had been at some point.

"So… where is he?" was Violet's next question.

Vivien let out a long huff of air, and Violet shifted her weight, eyes travelling to the house next door. Constance's house, currently empty. There had been a police officer at that house yesterday, who had later appeared in the Murder House, and made a phone call about Constance's body, had her taken out in a black bag. Violet wondered how long it would be before people started showing up at that place next door. First to clean out the place, and then to sell it.

"Constance took him to clean him up," Vivien explained, drawing Violet's mind back to the conversation at hand. Her mother's eyes were fixed on her pair of loose slip-on shoes, avoiding both her husband and her daughter's. "I never saw him again after that."

Ben decided to jump in here. "We think that Constance probably stole him," he said.

Violet stared at her father this time. She didn't know whether to be more alarmed by the fact that her parents had concluded that the only reason their baby could possibly be missing was that their neighbor had stolen him, or by the fact that, knowing Constance, they were most likely right. Of course, that brought up another concern.

"But Constance is dead now…" Violet trailed off.

Both of her parents' eyes moved to the ground. There was something interesting about the grass, it seemed. It was Vivien who gave a small nod towards the house behind them. Violet stared at it, the house. And for a moment, she wondered at what her mother could be referring to. They had already established that her sibling wasn't a spirit in there. But that would mean…

Vivien spoke before Violet could ask. "Those kids…" She stopped speaking, biting her lip.

Violet's eyes widened. Her mind was whirling, going a thousand different directions simultaneously. "But that isn't possible, Mom," she managed to get out. "You baby would be four years old right now, not _fourteen_."

Her parents shared another glance. "Violet -" Ben began, voice gentle. "It's easy to lose time when it doesn't have any meaning."

Violet took a small step back. "What are you saying?" She already knew what her parents were saying. But that didn't mean she had to accept it.

"We don't think it's been four years," Ben said. "We think it's been fourteen."

Violet shook her head, dimly aware of the fact that she was trembling. "No. I can't -" she stammered. "I can't have lost _ten years_."

Violet had counted the years, or at least tried to. Halloween provided the one concrete marker of time passing, and so she always counted by that. By the day when she felt the house's hold on her slipping. She couldn't have lost that much time. It wouldn't have faded away around her, because it didn't feel like it had been ten years, _goddammit._ Was she going crazy? Was she starting to lose it, like Nora? Had she already lost it?

She had thought she would have been nineteen. She was twenty-nine. She didn't know why she thought about that. Or why it bothered her more than anything else. She was a ghost, she didn't age. But for whatever reason, that thought wouldn't leave her alone.

 _Deep breaths,_ she told herself. She couldn't break down, here on the lawn, when her parents were watching. "What does that mean?" she somehow managed to say.

Vivien shook her head. "I can't have him in the house," she said, and it took Violet a second to remember that they were talking about her brother. "I just can't."

Her father nodded, placing a hand on her mother's shoulder. Violet wondered if either of them ever thought about the places that hand had been. The _things_ it had touched. "I'm with your mother," Ben said. Of course he was. He always supported Vivien, because she had forgiven him for being a total dick, and he didn't want her to be cross with him again.

Violet looked between the two. Ben. Vivien. Vivien. Ben. And in that moment, she felt something building up within her. Something she hadn't felt since her death. "This is so fucking insane," she spat out.

Her mother shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Do you understand why they have to go?" she asked slowly, and Violet could only stare at her mother. She was sure that she must have been gaping. If this were a television show, she imagined her reaction would've been framed as something rather comical.

The situation was far from ever being defined as "comical".

"You two are on so much shit!" she shouted, startling a group of seagulls resting nearby, who flew upwards while squawking loudly. "Have you been using with Doctor Montgomery in the basement?"

"Violet -" Ben tried.

"You tell me this kid's my brother," Violet interrupted, digging her nails into the palms of her hands, "and we have to kick him out of the house when we now know for a fact that he's got nowhere else to go?"

"You don't know what it's like," Vivien insisted while Violet gave her a menacing glare, "to see your _child_ that you never got to raise, here in this house."

 _Has my mother always been so weak?_ Violet couldn't help but think. Out loud, she said, "Oh, so we're kicking him out because he's hurting _your_ feelings! I guess I'm glad I didn't make it to eighteen. How long would it have taken before you couldn't stand to look at my face anymore?"

"Violet, it's not like that -" her father began, but Violet cut him off again.

"You know what?" she exclaimed. "I'm done with you two's bullshit."

And with that, she turned around to stomp away towards the front door. She could feel tears brimming at the edges of her eyes, but she forced them to stay away. Stay away, just for a little longer, because she didn't want her parents to see her cry after this.

She had almost made it to the house when her mother called out from behind her. "Violet -"

Violet whirled around, shooting her parents a look that would have killed them both a second time, had angry expressions been capable of homicide. "If either one of you tries to get rid of them," she threatened, "I'm not gonna hesitate to tell the other ghosts who that kid is."

"They could still get murdered by one of the other ghosts," Vivien said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

Violet actually laughed at this. "If you think that, you clearly didn't listen in on their conversation in the foyer." After a moment of consideration, she added, "Besides, none of the killers here are interested in kids." And with that, she willed herself back into the upstairs bedroom, too tired to even bother making the trek.

* * *

It was hours later. The sun had sunk lower in the sky, and the house had grown dim. Mallory had dozed off on the couch upstairs with a novel she had found (something called _Good Omens_?), and Michael, with nothing better to do, had decided to explore the house some more. Despite having already gone down there, he found himself in the basement again.

It was dark down there, with only small spots of sunlight to illuminate the space. The lightbulb had long burnt out, if it had ever worked to begin with. Michael didn't mind the darkness. He did mind the dust, though.

He couldn't stop thinking about the last few days. About what he had seen, in the past with Mallory. About what Violet, his would-be sister had told him. It was all a giant mass of writhing anger and confusion and agony in his brain. He didn't even know where to begin examining it. It was all just - wrong. And Constance - how did she fit into all of this? He wished there was someone he could ask about this. Wished there was someone who could help him figure all of this out.

Well, there was one light in all this confusion. Watching the sunset from the roof. And no matter how much he had tried to just focus on the light, Mallory couldn't leave his mind. The way she had looked at him, and her apology that had seemingly come out of nowhere - and this one that he had believed.

And sometimes he wished - well, he didn't know. But he saw them as being friends, maybe in another life. But that couldn't be this one. There was too much of a mess between them now. At least Michael knew the two likely wouldn't try to be killing one another any time soon, but that was the least of his worries. Mallory had mentioned a vision that had scared her - scared her into trying to kill him? What could that even mean?

He sat down against one of the walls, leaning back against it. The wall _thumped_ behind him under his weight, and his brow furrowed. Something about that _thump_ didn't sound right. He turned around, running his fingers along the wall. They found a small seam, and Michael had watched enough horror movies on the television to know what this was. A secret passage, or more likely just a secret compartment. "What?" he muttered, moving to pry it open when a sound from the other end of the room distracted him.

He turned to see a woman who looked to be a few years older than Mallory, with a soul that smelled a couple years older than that. "Hey kid," she said casually, leaning against the opposite wall, dark hair falling over her shoulders.

Michael stood up, staring at the spirit. "Who are you?" he asked, hoping she wouldn't notice the tremble in his voice.

She shrugged before shooting hima wink that sent a chill down his spine. "Who do you want me to be?"

He didn't say anything. He didn't trust himself to be able to form a coherent sentence. He wanted desperately to be anywhere but here, talking with this ghost. He could be outside, soaking up the last rays of sun for the summer before the winter came. The woman rolled her eyes. "I'm Hayden McClaine," she said.

Michael began scooting down the stairs. He knew what she was implying. Constance had brought home a fair amount of "special friends" when she thought he would be asleep, and he had watched from the crack between his bedroom door and the floor as their feet made their way into Constance's bedroom, as their voices echoed through the hallway. And he was interested in it at all, least of all from a stranger.

"I don't -" he stammered. "I don't do it with ghosts."

Hayden cocked her head to the side. "Ghosts in general," she teased, "or are you just trying to get rid of me? If your hot friend was a ghost, would you fuck her?"

Michael nearly choked. "I wouldn't -" he tried to get out, but the words were sticking to his throat like paste. He coughed, clearing out his throat. "We're not even friends," he managed to say. "We tolerate one another."

Hayden sighed, and Michael caught disappointment in that small sound. "People who just tolerate you wouldn't look at you like that?"

Michael eyed her warily. "Like what?"

"Like she wanted to bang right then and there!" Hayden exclaimed. "I saw you two on the rooftop. It's fun to watch virgins mess around with their feelings."

Michael bristled. "That was private."

A smirk found its way onto Hayden's features as she slowly shook her head. "Nothing is private in this house, sweetheart," she told him. "Darling love."

Michael hated that idea. That every minute of every day, dozens of spirits could easily be watching his every move. He wished that some of those moments could have stayed private. The rooftop. His conversation with Violet. And all sorts of other things.

Hayden took a couple steps closer to him, licking her lips, and Michael found himself backing up until he hit the wall behind him, letting out a small gasp. "You sure you don't want to mess around?" she asked.

Michael shook his head. "I told you I wasn't attracted to ghosts."

Hayden was close to him now, so close he could feel her breath, or at least, the air passing through her, since she didn't actually need to breathe. He pressed himself into the wall, urging his supposed abilities to help him out. Slam her back against the wall. "Are you sure?" she whispered.

Michael willed himself to stay calm. "Stop it."

Michael didn't see the knife until Hayden was already holding it over his chest. His eyes widened, but before he could do anything, she was already bringing it down to his chest.

He felt the blade pierce his flesh just as an inhuman force shoved the ghost to the other side of the room, bones cracking as she hit the stone wall. She let out a scream as she slumped to the floor. "Fuck!"

Michael wondered if he had done it, until Mallory stepped into the room, her right hand still outstretched. Turning that hand over so that her palm faced up, she closed her eyes, concentrating on something. And then, a burst of flames suddenly appeared there. "You are going to leave him alone," she said coldly.

Michael slumped down to the floor as Hayden spat out a mouthful of blood. "Or what?" the ghost hissed. "You can't kill me, sweetheart. I'm already dead."

"I'm a powerful witch," Mallory fired back as the flames in her hand seemed to glow brighter, "and I know several spells that will restrict you to the closet in the hallway. Or your own body, underground wherever it is if it isn't cremated. Do you want that?" Hayden only stared at her. "Gett the fuck away from us," Mallory growled, "or I'll do it, I swear to God."

Hayden shot a short look at Michael before vanishing into thin air. Mallory closed her hand, and the fire dissipated, taking the small amount of light with it. She made her way over to where Michael was sitting, still trembling, and bent down so that they were eye level. "Are you okay?" she asked gently.

Michael opened his mouth to answer, and choked. "No…" he managed to say, voice shaking.

Mallory reached out a steady hand, hesitating for a split second before placing it on his bare arm. A moment passed, and then Michael felt a relaxing current passing through his veins. His sighed, eyes fluttering shut as he leaned his head back against the wall. "That's nice," he muttered.

Mallory moved to sit down next to him, brushing the dust away from the spot. Michael nearly cried as she took her hand, and the relaxing energy, away. "If she bothers you again, you can defend yourself," she told him.

Michael blinked at her. "What?"

"With your ability," Mallory reminded him. "Throw her across the room. Scare her off."

Michael gave her a confused look. She had promised she wasn't going to kill him, yes. But this had been a perfect opportunity, he realized. She could live with her morals intact, knowing that she wasn't the one that killed him. Her conscience could've been clean of all guilt. So why was she encouraging him to defend himself?

"When I said I wasn't going to kill you," Mallory started, "I meant it. That extends to letting you die."

Michael didn't say anything. Neither of them did. They just sat there in silence, in the basement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2021 to my readers, as always, and I hope it's going as well as it can so far.
> 
> This chapter was uploaded to ao3 and fanfiction.net, respectively, on January 11th, 2021, as well as being promoted on Tumblr. If you see this anywhere other than these two sites, please contact me immediately.

**Author's Note:**

> [Follow me on Tumblr!](https://lizzy-claire-fandom.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Edit 2/11/21: I don't think I'll be updating this fic anywhere in the near future. I've come to some personal conclusions, as well as a couple realizations, and I'm just not invested in writing this or even being a part of this fandom anymore. I'll be adding this to the anonymous collection for the time being, so I may come back to it but it won't be linked to my ao3 profile. I hope y'all will understand my decision.


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